Arc 1: The Discovery
by vlad the inhaler
Summary: What it says on the tin. Animorphs rebooted, from a more 'adult' style. More gritty but not grimdark. Will diverge from canon to some extent but you'll recognize all the main characters and more than a few key events. Give the people what they want in an animorph fic: morphing, fighting aliens, seat-of-pants-missions-and-escapes.
1. The Discovery: Prologue

**Arc 1: The Discovery**

 **Prologue**

 **Elfangor**

* * *

My name is Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. I am a Prince of the Andalite Fleet currently assigned to _GalaxyTree_. Or perhaps, was – the great Dome Ship had been ambushed as we approached Earth by a Yeerk squadron hidden behind the planet's only moon. I myself may well be the last Andalite alive within light years of this system, an honor likely to prove temporary as I hurtled towards the surface of the planet in my badly damaged fighter. This was particularly painful as my younger brother, a mere _aristh_ – what the human militaries would call a cadet – had been inside the namesake Dome, which I had seen moments ago splashing into planets' largest ocean.

Depending on what you are, you may find this all quite extraordinary. If you are human, you must now be aware that there are alien species in the galaxy, and we Andalites are the primary opposition to another species – The Yeerks – who seek to destroy you. My species do not tend toward a form of human humor in which the speaker says something while intending to be known to be speaking an untruth - and certainly not on a matter so serious.

If you are an Andalite, you must accept that our battle for Earth began with the complete destruction of a Dome Fleet in a battle in which we had near parity of firepower but were taken by total tactical surprise. It is likely the stories will omit this tale, but I cannot. For one, to do so would be to forget the bravery of the warriors aboard _GalaxyTree_. This I cannot do. For another, everything that occurred from this point forward was dependent on this first, great loss.

My tale, I am afraid to say, is only likely to appear even more unbelievable as it unfolds. Rest assured, other than a few name changes and some information that has remained censored lest it fall into Yeerk hands, everything I tell you is true.

I had been to Earth before. I had in fact spent many years living among the humans, the most sentient species on that planet. A being whose name I cannot reveal but whose powers of the universe are such that space and time are mere instruments for his machinations brought me back across the vast distance of space and inserted me into a critical moment in a battle against a Yeerk grand fleet, and rearranged the fabric of spacetime so as to fold over thirty years of my absence from my own people into but a fraction of that time.

In the process of transporting me across the fabric, I caught small glimpses of what had been and what could be. I had seen the birth of my human son, destined to never know me in that role and endure great sadness. I had seen his path and how it entangled itself with the Yeerk invasion of his home, along with the possible permutations of others who might walk the path of the warrior alongside him. I had seen the thousand possible moments I might or might not meet him.

I had seen my own death. A thousand different points of possibility with one inevitable constant.

There was a weapon hidden on Earth, a weapon so powerful that I cannot speak of its location or hint at its purpose. My first thought I am ashamed to admit was to deny my fate, to attempt to land at the site where I had hidden this weapon when I first came to Earth in a time that no longer fully was. In that moment, I had at last come to a…there is no word in any human language to describe it. A _thiliss_ – a blank moment in the spacetime when an individual choice must be made and can spawn an infinities of unique outcomes. Free will in its purest form.

I had not known precisely how this moment would come, only that it would. That I had seen the hole in the fabric whose space I now occupied. I had fought many nights imagining what choice I would make in this moment.

I chose my son. I chose to give the humans a chance to save their own world, breaking with the traditions and taboos of my people that had appeared during the long war. I, with no company but my precious forbidden cargo, set my fighter to attempt a landing in a new industrial sector on the outskirts of my old human city.

If you are reading this then you know that ultimately, I chose to give five human children access to the _Escafil_ _Device_ , and in doing so gave them access to technology so restricted that only a fraction of my own people are allowed to undergo its treatment. Whether I am found guilty of treason will be up for the War Princes of the Council to decide but let me at least ease your mind that I did not do so hastily. I had no intention of risking handing this technology over to a Yeerk-Controller! Whatever stories are passed down among our people, know that I at least took some precaution so as to avoid repeating _Seerow's Kindness._

Either my landing was not as well executed as it ought to have been, or else my ship was more badly damaged than I had anticipated. The energy diffusers did not work as they should, some of the kinetic energy of the crash was not deflected, but travelled through my ship. and while I survived the impact, My forehooves suffered badly, leaving me limping very badly and favoring my hind legs. There was no time to transform at the moment – a complete cycle to morph and unmorph back into my healed form would have taken approximately six of Earth's minutes, and there was too much to do while every second counted. Quickly – but not hastily, I do not wish to suggest my own Princes during my own tenure as an _aristh_ had not adequately trained me for this eventuality – I disabled all essential equipment within the fighter that I could not take with me. I erased all information from the ship's computing system. The ship, now not even capable of flight even had it been physically repaired, could only self-destruct. I set it to do so in fifteen of Earth's minutes, or when pressure on the exterior hull was compromised. Most likely, the Yeerks would simply blow my ship up from the sky; if they did not, hopefully my ship would take out a handful of Controllers in the process.

All of this took fifty-three of Earth's seconds.

Scanning the interior of my ship one last time with my stalk eyes, I ordered the door open. My plan was to take shelter in one of the nearby structures still under construction and outside the danger zone of either a Yeerk attack or my own ship's self-destruction. I would need to find a place to hide my small but critical cache of supplies and then I would morph into a _kafit_ – a species native to my home planet most analogous to an Earth bird, although one with four legs and twelve wings. From there, I could either take flight or return to my own body depending on my needs.

I confess, although I had known – had hoped – that the intersection of spacetime to meeting my son was near, I did not expect it to happen right then. But the moment I saw him I knew. Tobias. My son, certainly well under twenty earth years, looked at me, slightly crouched behind the debris of human construction materials about eight _neths_ – approximately forty human feet – away. Such was my emotion for a moment that all four eyes were focused upon him, and it took me another eight earth seconds to realize he was not alone. Four others stood with him, their own eyes (two apiece) wide in shock and bodies paralyzed between the need to attack and the need to flee. Another male, slightly taller and broader than my son, with slightly darker hair but the same approximate complexion. A third, this was smaller and slightly darker. And two females, one with very pale features and one dark.

Fourteen seconds after our first contact, my son opened his mouth.

"Who are you?"

((I am Elfangor. Do not be afraid.))


	2. The Discovery: Jake I

**Arc 1: The Discovery**

 **Chapter 1**

 **Jake**

* * *

My name is Jake.

I can't tell you my last name or where I live. To be honest, if you know where to look you can probably figure out a few details about me that I'd rather you didn't know, but I'm not going to make it easy for you. I can't. Too much is at stake. The _world_ is at stake.

An hour ago, I had been hanging out at the mall with my best friend, Marco. The school year was almost over and the two of us had the bright idea of applying for part time work at the arcade – cleaning up after kids bumming around over the summer, in exchange for a bit of cash and all the free tokens after hours that we could ever want. My cousin, Rachel, was already working two evenings a week and Saturdays at one of the larger anchor stores nearby, so it seemed like a pretty good way for all of us to make some money and have a place to hang for a few months. Marco and I put in our applications, hung around the arcade for a bit playing a few cheesy retro shoot-em-up zombie games.

"Spending your first paycheck here already, huh?" a girl's voice teased behind me.

Marco and I didn't stop shooting zombies. "Hey Rachel. You done then?" I turned around as my character got eaten by a horde. "Oh, hey Cassie."

Rachel gave me a little grin. "Cass came by to say hi and I told her you would give us all a ride home. That's fine, right?"

I nodded, resisting the urge to given Rachel a nudge. We're not exactly a clique, but we've all hung out together since I can remember. Marco's my best friend obviously, and Rachel's my cousin. She and Cassie go back a long way, with a third girl Melissa – who has kinda fallen off the radar lately. I guess what I'm saying is that we're all close, but close in a way that on any given night it could have been one of maybe nine or ten of us. And I've kinda started noticing Cassie more recently in a way that my cousin finds hilarious.

"Damn it! We done, homey?" Marco asked, still absorbed in the game where he'd just been pushed off a high rise by the same zombie hoard that had eaten me. "Hey Rach. Cassie. When you get here?"

The girls exchanged a look and did that _tsk_ thing girls do, and Marco shrugged it off. "Whatever, you guys ready to head home?"

Everyone agreed, it was getting towards dusk and if I was driving everyone home it was going to be tight getting back in time before my parents started calling to find out where I was. Driving was a _privilege_ as my parents liked to remind me. One of the rules was not being out all night. And with my brother getting ready to go off to college, I think my mom has been seeing me more as the family baby.

We were heading out past the food court, making small talk and I was trying to not look too much at Cassie but not _not_ look when I almost ran straight into a kid from school.

"Oh! Sorry, hey Tobias."

Tobias shrugged. "Hey Jake."

Tobias is a bit of a loner in school. He moves around a lot between family, I don't know much about his homelife, but he's been in and out of our school depending on who he's living with at the moment. A week ago, I helped him out against some guys who had him cornered in the bathroom and were threatening to give him a swirlie, but it's not like we hang out and it wasn't something to bring up here.

"We're headed home – do you need a ride?"

He looked at me and his eyes took in the others, who had skirted around me and we're still moving towards the doors.

"I have to drop off Cassie first, then Marco and Rachel. But if you don't mind the wait your welcome to come along."

He shrugged. "Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, man."

I nodded, and we joined the others, who looked at Tobias but didn't do more than acknowledge he was with us, the conversation going back to Marco explaining why the arcade was clearly the best place to work in the mall.

Me. Marco. Rachel. Cassie. Tobias. If it had been a different night, it would have just been Me and Marco. Or Me and Rachel. Or Rachel, Cassie, and Melissa. Or Me and my brother Tom. Or Tobias, alone. It's weird to think about that.

But whatever it could have been, it was the five of us that headed out of the mall, walking across the unusually empty parking lot that surrounds it.

"Meteors." Tobias said to nobody, eyes locked on the sky.

I frowned, confused about what he was talking about and then followed his eyes up, and saw them – a giant streak of light across the sky. But one light didn't streak, it zigged. Straight towards us.

"That's a plane or something!" Marco yelled out a moment later, pointing to the wavering light that was headed our direction. Faster than something simply in freefall.

We should have run. I think if we had waited another second, Marco would have added 'Run!' and we would have. Back to my car. Back to our homes. Back to our ordinary lives. Away from the mall and the things falling out the night sky.

Tobias though went forward that crucial split second before Marco could say anything. A moment later I was following him, around the parking lot towards the back side of the mall and whatever Marco might have said, died.

Instead, Rachel said, "Let's go!" as she ran forward too. That's my cousin. I turned around, and Cassie was following too, a half step behind – not bad, given my cousin has the speed of a girl who has spent her whole life doing gymnastics and soccer _and_ lacrosse. 

The light continued to fall, and we went through a gap in the security fence that separates the actual mall from an abandoned construction site from back when a developer had the idea of transforming the mall into this enormous convention center and mega complex. They'd run out of money half way through and so now it's just the collection of squat concrete structures that were supposed to be the main drag. Just in time for the lights to crash in a clearing in the middle of the area, and to see that Marco was half right; it was a plane… but it wasn't a plane like anything I'd ever seen before.

It was about as long a school bus but shaped like a giant egg. It had little stubby fins for wings and was well… it was a spaceship. But almost like the sort you'd expect to see on a kid's show, you know? Friendly. Harmless.

Then the hatch opened and out came the alien, and 'harmless' left the picture. The alien looked like someone had taken an alien face you might see in Star Wars – a sort of almost-human-but-not sort of thing, and then attached it to a horse's body. Except the horse still had arms.

And the horse a tail that ended in a scorpion blade.

The others were around me, all between us and the alien a couple of rain-filled barrels.

"Who are you?" Tobias asked after forever.

The alien didn't speak. But I heard it in my head all the same.

((I am Elfangor. Do not be afraid.))

This was the second moment we could have left. Scrambled away from the alien and gone home and maybe told ourselves the next day the whole thing was a stunt or a local film crew or something. We might even have had a few days to laugh about it before we had Yeerks stuck into our heads.

"What was that?" Rachel asked, deciding for all of us that we were staying.

"You heard that too? It can get in our head?" Marco of course. Quick, clever Marco already trying to figure out things a step ahead of me.

((My species communicates through thoughts. I am an Andalite. You are in danger. We must go.))

Marco said something about it being way past time to go but to be honest with you I can't remember the specifics.

I stepped forward.

"My name is Jake." I'm sure Marco was looking at me like I was an idiot.

The alien's eyes – its extra eyes, because it had four, two on its face and two on stalks protruding from the top of its head – turned from Tobias to me.

((Hello, Jake. I will explain to all of you what I can, but we must go. My ship will interfere with their sensors, but the Yeerks are coming and my ship is set to destruct in just under twelve of your minutes.))

The alien moved towards us, and I crouched, not sure if I was going to have to fight this centaur-scorpion-alien or just take off. Then it stumbled.

"It's hurt. Oh, you poor thing." Cassie blurted out, coming forward and then moving past me, headed towards the alien like a concerned mother.

I stared, and in that second things became surreal in a way they hadn't by an alien simply falling out of the sky. Not only was an alien telling us we were about to die, but Cassie wanted to take care of it. Her parents run a wildlife preserve and veterinary clinic and so she's grown up practically living the vet life on top of naturally having a heart of gold, but this was… something else.

"Cassie, what the hell!" Marco summed it up fairly well.

((I am fine,)) the alien _thought_ to us as Cassie crouched next to one of its front legs.

((But we must go! I can heal this injury quickly enough, but we must get away from here now.))

The alien started limping towards the shell of what was once probably going to be a Surfer World or Pizza Shack or whatever sort of generic retail shops that hover around on the edge of developments.

We followed. Even with the injury it moved with the urgency of someone who had about ten minutes to find shelter or get blown up. I guess we could have run, but I don't think the thought crossed any of our minds. Not even Marco's.

Let me take a minute to make clear, I'm not calling Marco a coward. He's always stuck with me through everything and as you'll see later, he's one of the bravest people I've ever known. He just tends to think before doing really stupid things, like following an alien with a grim reaper tail who just told you that your life is in danger.

We entered, and for the first time I realized the alien was carrying… it looked sort of like a cross between a saddle and a bookbag you might have in lower school, a kind of plastic-metal shiny look to it more than cloth. It was strangely _almost_ human. Like its ship, kinda comically harmless. And the alien's hands – small and weak compared to the rest of its powerfully built body – started rummaging through it, two eyes focused intently on it while its other two scanned the room. A moment later a tiny light flickered in its palm.

((Into that corner)) it said, pointing towards the very back where the wall formed into a small nook – I guess it probably would have ended up being a closet or the bathrooms or something – and we followed. It went back to digging into its saddle as we stood there, five teenagers and a blue horse alien.

((The portable variant is much less powerful than that on my ship. It is designed to cloak the body signature of a single Andalite as well as produce a hologram interference around our space. If you pack tightly together, we should be fine)).

"Should?!" Marco again. Of course, he jumped past the not-really-explanation of the alien technology and straight to the likelihood of survival. He was close to freaking out – not that we all weren't, but I know Marco. When he hits a point, he gets testy and he rants. We needed answers now.

The… Andalite… went back to fiddling with the gadget in its hands that was supposed to protect us as we arranged ourselves into a pack in the corner. A small part of my brain noted that I'd hoped for happier circumstances the first time I was pushed up like this against Cassie.

((My ship was shot down in battle over your planet by a Yeerk Blade Ship.)) The alien began, one eye moving among us as the other three concentrated on the device in its hand.

((The details are not important at this moment but know that the Yeerks are attempting to invade your planet. My ship was sent out as a force to discover the extent of the Yeerk invasion and if possible, prevent further incursions. We discovered upon arrival that the invasion was significantly larger than imagined. We failed.))

"An invasion?" Rachel, and despite everything she managed to sound skeptical. "I think if aliens were invading, we would know about it. I doubt Congress could cover up- "

((It is not an invasion as you imagine. The Yeerks are parasites. They infest the brain of a host through the closest orifice – in your cases, the ear canal – and take over all functions of the host. We call such hosts Controllers. You would not know such an invasion was occurring until it was too late.))

"No way man," Marco this time, echoing Rachel's incomprehension but with a bit more panic. "I mean even if… even if these body snatcher things could just pop into my head, you just came down in a space ship! We saw it. No way you can just cover up a giant damn space battle over our heads!"

We all looked at Marco, and I found myself nodding. He was right. No way the Yeerks or Andalites could cover this up. The army, the air force would be on it, as well as every other army in the world. Both stalk eyes landed on Marco, and the Andalite cocked its head slightly to the side, like it was trying to explain a difficult concept to a small child. Another freakishly human thing to do.

((Any organizations on your planet, such as they are, tasked with monitoring interstellar activity would have been undoubtedly first targets for the Yeerks. Any planetary warning system you may have had was likely compromised before the invasion truly began.))

Marco's response was cut off by a loud noise outside, sort of like a jet engine but slightly higher pitched and less loud but more… intense, if that makes sense.

((The Yeerks are here. You must not move.)) It held its little device out amongst us as we all stared at one another, the moment dawning on us that this was _it_. Whatever it was.

I can't really describe what happened next. I was inside what was basically a concrete bunker, huddled around my friends and a blue alien. There were shouts of human voices, along with one sort of loud guttural growling noise to deep and rumbling that I couldn't imagine it belonging to a human.

((A Hork-Bajir. I will explain later)).

There was a lot of cursing. Then the jet noise started up again.

Then the loudest explosion I had ever heard.

"Was that the self-destruct?" Tobias whispered.

((No.))

It struck me that this was the first time I had heard an _emotion_ in the thoughts. Annoyance.

((The Yeerks lifted off and blew up my fighter seventeen seconds prior to detonation. They took no losses)).

Took no losses. Looking back, knowing what I know now… about the Yeerks, about the reality of being a Controller… but at the time, an alien was expressing sadness its ship hadn't blown up what could have been up to a dozen people. People from my town.

We all shrunk back. If the alien noticed it didn't do or say anything anything.

((We must wait a while longer. They will likely not bother conducting a full search – it is futile to find an Andalite warrior who does not want to be found, and they will know my rank from the class of my ship. But even if they do, we are safe within the field I am projecting, if only just. The Yeerks will remain in the area until they have responded to the incoming threat.)

"What incoming threat?" Cassie asked, her voice wobbling slightly.

((Listen)

Police Sirens.

Even more than the just hearing an alien space ship blow up an alien space ship, it was the sound of two cop cars coming into the lot, hearing their screams of 'put your hands up!' and then the faint _pew pew_ of Yeerk _laser guns_ – low powered Dracon beams, I would later learn – … hearing the cops cry out and fall to the ground, tackled by the Controllers, by the Yeerks, and then minutes later hearing the cops stand up, taking orders from their new masters and driving away as if nothing had happened.

I had just witnessed four people in my town enslaved to aliens, and all I could do was not scream. I was holding hands with Cassie. I was also holding hands with Marco. All of us squeezing one another's hands and keeping our mouths shut. Rachel looked mutinous.

((It is safe. But we must go now.)) The alien said at last. It handed its saddle to Tobias, ((There is one more shock that you must endure tonight. Do not be alarmed.))

It looked at me. ((Jake, please take this.))

It handed me the cloaking device.

And then it changed.

Cassie did scream for a moment, though she shut her mouth a half second later, clamping her own hand over it. If she hadn't, I would have screamed myself. The alien's tail and two eyes were sucked into its body. A body that was suddenly shedding hair, although nothing fell on the ground. It just sort of… melted, leaving a waxy, wrinkly skin behind. A mouth appeared on its face out of nowhere, just sort of popped into being while its nose spread out until it covered about half its face and then came out, hardening into a snout like a cross between a pig and a lizard.

Its body then shrank, but whereas before its body parts had pulled into itself, now its legs disappeared as if they were being pushed down by its flanks. Like watching a Slinky collapse in on itself. Hooves split and webbing appeared between them…

I'm sure there was more, but you get the picture. It was my first time seeing a morph, I'm fairly amazed I remember as much as I did. But in two minutes there was something that resembled a cross between an iguana and a molten candle.

((This is the greatest power of the Andalites, our discovery of a way to morph into any creature whose DNA we can acquire through touch)) the alien's voice filled our heads, though it was different now in a way I can't quite describe. Like it's voice if that's the right word was different than the way it had sounded before.

((It is one of the many tools that we use to battle the Yeerks. When we arrive at a safe location, I will provide you some tools of your own to resist the invasion of your home world. But for now, we must leave.)) And with that it pounced at Tobias, who gave a jolt but held steady, relaxing when the alien simply burrowed into the saddle Tobias was now carrying.

"Ok." I said, taking stock of things and looking at the others. "Let's go. Back to my car. Let's go ho- "

"No way, bro," Marco, suddenly snapping back out of his shock and pacing slightly as his mind whizzed through all sort of awful scenarios.

"Did you not just hear the dude? There are _aliens_ out here, man. _Aliens_ who want to get in our brains. Aliens who just took four cops. You wanna go driving around the city right now, leaving the mall and having your license plate timestamped on every traffic camera between here and Cassie's?"

We looked at one another, unsure what to do.

The alien said nothing.

Marco started pacing for real, snapping his fingers to himself as he thought. I let him. Marco is cynical. His jokes aren't half as funny as he thinks. But he's my best friend and he's smarter than me when it's something he cares about. I'm not dumb but it's Marco who can see things from every angle.

"No… No." he said at last, looking at me. "We're gonna use that cloaking thing to get back to the mall. We gonna hang out there a little bit longer. We wait until one of our parents' calls asking where we are and we say we are still at the mall and we lost track of time. If nobody calls then we call them in an hour. Either way, nobody leaves the here without an alibi that Yeerks can trace on our phones that we were at the mall the whole time."

I nodded. It was a good plan. Worst case scenario I'd rather be grounded or lose car privileges for a week than bring the Yeerks to my own doorstep. The others looked at me, as if waiting for me to decide.

"Ok. Yeah, that's good." We started moving, the others huddling around me and the cloaking device as we crept out in a kind of weird group shuffle.

"But no talking about any of this. Not in public. Not at the mall." I paused, thinking. "Cassie, can we meet at your place, tomorrow?" Cassie's farm was the most isolated place I could think of, and it wouldn't be weird for me and Rachel to be there, or for Marco to tag along. I wasn't even thinking about Tobias, but Cassie's mom and dad were the sort who wouldn't think twice about one more kid hanging out with us.

Cassie nodded.

Everyone agreed.

"Ok, so Cassie's tomorrow morning. Nobody says anything about this to anyone, nobody does anything tonight. What do we do about uh..."? I jerked my head towards the saddle thing that Tobias was still holding.

"I'll take it… him," Tobias replied after a moment. He shrugged. "My uncle isn't going notice anything, trust me."

Marco looked like he wanted to argue, but I cut him off. "Ok. You need a ride to Cassie's tomorrow?"

Tobias shook his head. Nobody said anything after that.

And we went back to the mall. Back to where we'd been an hour and a lifetime ago.


	3. The Discovery: Marco I

**Arc 1: The Discovery**

 **Chapter 2**

 **Marco**

* * *

My name is Marco and in the last ten hours I've become an insomniac.

In my defense, I spent last night huddled in a corner of an abandoned building with a space alien while another group of aliens blew up his ship, and then learned all about a huge interstellar war which means my life is now something between _They Live_ and _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_. I'd been up all night turning in bed trying to put together what we were gonna need to do, but I had nothing. No idea. No knowledge of how to fight back. So instead I took a left turn down Nightmare Avenue and started making a list of everyone I would infest if _I_ were a Yeerk. The President. The Vice-President. Army generals. NASA scientists. News reporters.

So when I started thinking about who little (but not that little) old Marco could tell to warn about the invasion and take all of this off our hands, everyone I could imagine being someone worth telling led me right back to the Yeerks. Which would lead to a Yeerk in my own ear. Game over.

I was going nuts. Around ten I sent Jake a text, asking if he wanted to hang out and if he could give me a ride. After everything we agreed on yesterday, we never even thought about how we would communicate. And I couldn't just say, "Hey Jake – ready to go to Cassie's and talk with the Andalite thing about the Yeerks?" when who knows how many people in the telecom companies or the NSA were infested, and no doubt 'Yeerk' would pop up as a word they might check up on.

A sudden wave of fear went through me – hopefully Jake wasn't about to _text me back_ with something like that.

But no, he just said he was planning on going to Cassie's and did I want to come? No, not really. But I said Yes anyway.

Lesson learned though: we had a _lot_ to talk about, and fast. Something as simple as school schedules and group texts became super important if the wrong move meant the end of our planet.

We rode in silence, agreeing to not pop the last bit of normality until we had to, and not really able to fill the space with small talk. And it's not like we had much to go on. We knew the alien was an Andalite. We knew it was a he. We knew he was called Elfangor. And we knew he was going to help us fight the brain parasites from outer space.

Not a lot to go on at the moment.

It took us maybe a quarter hour from my house to reach Cassie's farm. Cassie greeted us, letting us know her parents were out for the day on call, and that the others were waiting in the barn.

Sure enough, there they were. Rachel sitting up on a work bench, legs swinging slightly. The new kid – Tobias – pacing in the back near a cage of rabbits. And the Andalite. Can't forget the Andalite.

"Before we do this, I want to know what he's offering us," I said once Cassie closed the door behind us, pointing at Elfangor. "You said last night you would help us fight the Yeerks. You've got some laser guns or something in that bag of yours from last night?"

((I have this.)) He pulled out a little light blue box, a cube of maybe six inches long on each side.

"What is it?"

((This is the _Escrafil_ Device. It enables one to store data in Z-space, much as a space ship must do in order to travel through it. Unlike a ship however, this produces a connection between a biological entity.))

"Okay…" I shrugged. Nobody else caught much of that, either, by their expressions.

Elfangor seemed agitated, his tail bobbing slightly up and down and his front legs pacing in place.

((The complexity of this technology cannot be understated. It makes even my own Dome Ship appear a child's toy in comparison. It is the most advanced product in the known galaxy.)) He paused. ((Even allowing you to become aware of its existence is likely a death sentence upon myself, when I return home.))

"That really sucks but… what does it _do_."

The Andalite looked around the room, and I think if I had been able to read alien emotions it might have been sheepish. But what do I know, it could have just as easily been murderous.

((It allows what you witnessed yesterday evening. To transform into a copy of any organic life form you acquire through touch.))

Silence. I mean I know we _saw_ it yesterday but I just thought it was something they could do, like a really fancy caterpillar turning into a butterfly then back again or something. It didn't really dawn on me that _we_ could have this power too.

"This is insane," I said. "We're supposed to beat off an alien invasion from outer space with what? Lions and Tigers and Bears?"

"It's better than doing nothing," Rachel cut in, glaring at me like that one time she'd caught me checking out her younger sister. She turned to Elfangor. "I'm in."

"Me too," Tobias.

I looked at Jake. "I'm not saying I'm out, but _think_ about this. We're not just going up against some aliens, like that isn't enough of a batshit crazy for us to be in. We're going up against the police. The CIA. The FBI. The _army_. Is the President a Controller? We don't know. It could be –"

((It has been some time since I have studied the political situation on your planet, but your country has hundreds of millions of people spread out across approximately four million of your square miles, correct?)) Elfangor spoke into our heads.

I nodded, not sure where he was going with this.

((Our scans of your system before the battle did not indicate a sufficient Yeerk presence to accomplish so much as all this. While we were ambushed by the Blade Ship, we only found one Yeerk pool. The industrial node around Jupiter substantiates this low level of infiltration at this time. While much of your infrastructure may be monitored and compromised, it is unlikely to be fully under Yeerk control. They do not have the logistics for that at this point.))

He paused.

((It would nonetheless be unwise to trust anyone in such a position, as I cannot guarantee who is or isn't a Controller.))

That was actually a bit of a relief. "Ok so maybe it's not as bad as it could be but we're still up against a lot." I paused, putting a thought out there that had been gnawing at me all night but I hadn't said aloud yet.

"It could be our own families."

Silence.

"Marco's right," Jake added. "But… I think we still do this. _Because_ he's right, there's nobody but us."

Yeah, thanks Jake, that was exactly what I was going for.

"I agree." Cassie.

"Yeah, me too." I added as twelve eyeballs in the room turned to me. I shrugged. "I can't let you go running off doing something stupid without me backing you up."

Jake laughed, the tension broken.

"Let's do this." Rachel, of course.

The Andalite looked among us, its stalk eyes circumnavigating the room. Then it held out its little box morphing thing that would change our lives forever.

((Touch.))

We did. Like some intergalactic team huddle. It was… kinda anticlimactic. We touched a box, it hummed and glowed a bit, and I got a pins-and-needles feeling in my hand for a few seconds and then it was done.

"So what now?" Tobias asked, as if we hadn't just subjected ourselves to an alien technology that turned us into X-Men.

((Now a permanent link exists between each of you and a self-contained Z-pocket, registered through your base DNA. When you touch any living organism you will be able to consciously scan its genetic sequence and create a data registry which will transform energy in the Z-pocket into…))

The alien stopped speaking, taking in all of our expressions again.

((You will be able to transform yourselves into any animal you touch, if you consciously will it.))

The Andalite looked around Cassie's barn with its two stalk eyes. Her parents use it as a sort of recovery room for rescued animals, so there's one stall for their horse, and the rest of the place is crowded with all sorts of cages for wounded animals. Elfangor's eyes rested on a reddish-brown bird.

((I will show you. I am in need of Earth morphs and this will be a good lesson for you.)) His main eyes turned towards Cassie. ((May I?)) He gestured to the bird.

Cassie nodded. "It's a red-tailed hawk. But its wing is still injured, are you sure…"

Elfangor nodded. ((In most cases, I am only copying the bird's genetics, not its current condition. There are some minor, mostly cosmetic changes that can be influence based on how the data is consciously registered by the individual, and within a species certain blending can be accomplished if done correctly, and there are rare occasions where the data becomes corrupted in the process… but I should be fine.))

I didn't catch most of that at the time, except the _'should_ be fine'.

He touched the hawk on the head, and it looked up at him then kinda went to sleep almost. A moment later Elfangor stepped away and the hawk came back to life. Freaky.

One of his eyes went to the video feed that showed the entrance of the barn. There was nobody around. Which we already knew, but it pays to be careful when you're with an alien who is about to teach you how to become a bird.

((Right now I am thinking of the red-tailed hawk, but I am not changing. You do not transform simply because you think of a bird or a _melnaar_ or a _taphilith_ – such would be counterproductive. You must consciously seek to change. Even a dream will not force the shift. Our scientists have rigorously tested this particular part of the technology.))

((Now, I will change.))

And then he did. First, he shrunk down to a hawk-sized Andalite. Nothing changed at all until we had this tiny midget alien. Then feathers started to burst out of his skin, but still blue and covered in Andalite… fur? Hair? Whatever. His face changed next, a beak growing out of a feathery Andalite face while his front legs shriveled up into his body, and then shot back out as a pair of wings. The deadly looking tail flattened out and elongated.

"That's so pretty," Cassie whispered.

((Was it?)) Elfangor asked as he completed the morph, his feathers transforming from blue to red and brown, sounding almost curious. ((You were fortunate to see it then, the morphing process is different every time. Very few can control the morphing pattern – it is an artform on the home world featuring these rarities. We call them _Estreen_ ))

Even aliens love a good performance show. Who knew?

"You can talk!" Tobias.

((Yes. Do you not remember yesterday when we were at your mall?))

Tobias turned slightly pink. "I just assumed it was an alien thing. You can talk as a hawk?"

((Thought-speak is maintained throughout the morph form. It has never been tested on humans, but the mathematics should prove universal.))

"Oh, another _should_ , _"_ I muttered.

Elfangor flapped his wings and flew up to the rafters, demonstrating that the injury to the original hawk had not carried over, then morphed back into himself. He was right, it was a lot more disgusting this time round. I'll spare you the details, but let's just say watching a pair of hooves sprout _out_ of a pair of Andalite sized wings is not something I want to see again any time soon.

"Who's first?" Jake asked. Tobias looked like he was about to speak but surprisingly, it was Cassie who answered.

"Me," she said, "already moving towards the one stall that actually held a horse. "I've always imagined what it would be like to be a horse…"

Jake and I shared a look. He rolled his eyes – but only after making sure Cassie couldn't see him. I smirked.

Cassie stroked the horse's nose, then came back over to us, suddenly looking a little nervous.

"Just concentrate on the change, right?" We all nodded, like we really had any idea.

((Yes.))

Cassie tensed, closed her eyes, and began to… well, she began to turn into a horse.

I'm sure as we go on, we're gonna really enjoy telling you all the really gross things that happen when you go from a human into a bat or a spider or a wolf. Right now, I can't. And Cassie made it look kinda cool, like Elfangor had the first time. It was still disgusting.

One big difference, when Cassie started bulking up like she was on every steroid known to man, her clothes exploded. Not literally, not like Elfangor's ship had. I mean her horse body just tore through her overalls and tee like they were nothing.

((Agghhh!))

"Cassie are you okay!" Rachel cried out, rushing up to grab the horse-Cassie's shoulders as she suddenly fell onto all fours and her legs started bending in new and exciting ways.

((I'm fine… just that was really painful. The clothes, not the morph. It's… weird. I'm okay.))

A minute later, there was a horse where Cassie had been. My best friend's crush was a horse. I was never going to let him forget this.

"How does it feel?" Tobias asked, looking kinda awestruck. Though to be fair, I'm sure we all did.

((It's… it's amazing. I can feel the horse. Like, I am here but the horse it also here, if that makes sense.))

Elfangor nodded. ((The brain of the animal must share space with the morphing host. With some species, it is not so difficult. But be aware that more, baser animals tend to have high levels of reflexive behavior. A 'simple' animal can be very difficult to control.))

((The horse just wants to run)) Cassie added. ((She feels itchy but… she's not nervous, just aware that she might have to be. There's a part of her that's got an eye… well a nose… out for predators but nothing here is really bothering her.))

Rachel laughed. "This is so cool! I want to be a horse too." She reached out towards Cassie –

((NO!)) Elfangor managed to thought-SHOUT into our heads. ((You must never acquire DNA from one who is in a morphed form. This creates a secondary connection in the Z-pocket and corrupts the integrity of the genetic code of the morph, and possibly the base. You must always acquire a morph from the original source.))

Rachel pulled her hand back like she'd been electrocuted. Bile rose in my throat. The idea that I could be turned into some intergalactic Frankenstein while what made Marco, _Marco_ turned into some alternate dimension mutant…

"This is serious stuff," Jake said, voice forced. We all nodded.

Elfangor turned to Tobias. ((If you are to fight the Yeerks, they must believe that you are Andalite, warriors of my fleet that survived the battle and continue the fight on earth. To this end, it would be beneficial for you to acquire me.))

Tobias hesitated. "Are you sure. I mean… you're not just a hawk or a horse…"

Elfangor nodded as Cassie stomped one hoof.

((I agree. Morphing sentient creatures feels… wrong.))

I shook my head. "We're going into a _war_. We need every advantage we can get. We might need to morph other people some times. Controllers. Or, or people with access to important places. We _have_ to do this." I was angry. Angry at Cassie for… for being part of what made me feel like I couldn't just turn tail and run away with my dad, and then trying to handicap me even when I agreed to fight. I wanted to scream.

"We put it to a vote," Jake said. "Not everything. Not every time. But for something like this, we vote."

I held back a retort. It was obvious to me this was a good idea, but maybe Jake was right. Or maybe he was just trying to keep me from tearing into the girl he liked. And if we were gonna work as a team – and we _had_ to work as a team – then having some rules we all agreed by was maybe more important than if we could morph into people.

Elfangor said nothing.

"What about later," Rachel asked. Looking between Jake and me. "If you four ever vote to stop fighting I'm not going to agree to it just because it's a vote."

Jake nodded. "I know. Some choices are up to us as individuals. Some we vote. And some… some we'll need a leader."

"Who?" Rachel asked, not a challenge but… her mom's a lawyer, I've seen her do the cross-investigation thing before with Rachel and her sisters. Rachel wanted everything laid out – out in the open. My kinda girl.

"Jake." I said, before I even realized I had said it. They all looked at me, not least of all Jake.

I shrugged. "Maybe not forever. But right now? Jake. We can decide the rest of it later, but he's your cousin, my best friend. Cassie's… friend too. He knows Tobias best out of any of us." I looked around at everyone, arms out. "Everyone agree that of this group, Jake's the leader?"

Nobody said no.

"I'm the leader _right now_ , we can decide a real leader later," Jake said at last. "And I say we put it to a vote. Do we morph humans? And… Andalites?"

"Yes," Rachel and Tobias said at the same time.

"Yes," I added. Three against none before Cassie and Jake had even voted.

((I vote no, anyway)) Cassie said at last.

"Four in favor," Jake said after a moment. "But if we're crossing this line, the first one is going to be me." He looked at me.

"Acquire me."

 _What!?_

"What the hell you talking about, bro?"

Jake paused for a moment. "If we're going to morph into people… maybe even people we know, then I want to go first. I won't do to anyone else what I won't be willing to do to me."

I don't think Jake really realized it, but that was the moment he doomed himself to being our leader. I could tell – everyone was thinking that, except Jake.

"It would be a good idea," I said slowly, a moment later. "Who knows when we might have to cover for one another. We should all acquire one of us at least, don't you think? Maybe even have all of us acquire all of us."

((That would not be wise.)) Elfangor broke in, after letting the humans have their moral dilemma in peace. ((It is academic of course so I cannot say it would be harmful, but there is some thought that registering the same DNA sequence in separate Z-pockets may risk a bleed-over effect. Normally this is of little consequence, with so many members of a species and so few with the morphing technology, it is unlikely that such a thing happens; rarely if at all. But all five of you to acquire the other four… I would not take such a risk unless necessary.))

Seems like there are all sorts of little catches to this super hero thing after all. Really starting to understand what a pain in the ass kryptonite really was to Superman.

"So, one each," I said, rethinking my plan. "Rachel and Cassie acquire each other. Me, Jake, and Tobias do a triangle- "

"You and Jake should morph each other," Tobias cut in. I started to argue but Tobias plowed ahead, the first time I'd seen him take a position so forcefully.

"You two know each other best, what's the point of me turning into either of you if anyone knows right away that I don't fit?"

A good point.

"Plus…" he jerked his head towards Elfangor. "If only one of us can uh- acquire an Andalite, I guess that leaves me," he grinned.

"Great," I replied, clapping my hands to get the ball rolling again. I looked at Elfangor. "Any more rules we ought to know about before I become a body double of my best friend?"

((Only two. The first is also highly academic. Nobody has yet reached it, but there is a theoretical maximum of the number of morphs that an individual can withhold. There are too many variables regarding genetic complexity and too small a sample to properly experiment, but the Z-pocket is not infinite, even if it is not truly contained, either. I would advise against simply acquiring every species you come across, or every human you believe might one day be useful.))

"Ok, no becoming a Borg. Anything else?"

((Yes. This is the most important rule of all. You must return to your form within what you would measure as two earth hours. After that period, the Z-pocket corrupts, and the link is lost. You will be trapped in the form you have taken forever at that point. What we call a _nothlit_.))

Nobody said a word. Cassie demorphed right then and there, naked except for her underwear. Nobody cared. At the time I don't think anyone really even noticed.

The meeting was kinda anticlimactic after that, even with me turning into Jake and Tobias turning into an alien. Jack acquired me and Rachel and Cassie acquired each other, but that was more or less it. With a potential limit on the number of morphs we could acquire, nobody was particularly eager to start the ball rolling by taking a rat or a rabbit.

We talked for another hour about security. We agreed we wouldn't change our habits at school. No searching 'Yeerk' on the net or saying anything in text messages that could be traced. Tobias didn't have a phone, so that was something we needed to figure out. Only Jake had a car, but Cassie had access to her dad's pickup truck, but she was barred from having friends ride with her – not a problem, if her friends were disguised as squirrels or flies or whatever.

It's weird to think that a war against aliens would start with boring talk about logistics and security, but there you go. We agreed that our next step was to find a Controller and go from there. Rachel brought up the cops from last night, but we'd never actually seen them. We needed a day to think about it, and I also had an English paper due tomorrow, as did Jake. Dumb… but again, security. No big changes, nothing to draw attention to ourselves.

Jake took me back to his place a few hours later. His parents were out, and his brother had been spending the last couple of weekends hanging out with a group called The Sharing, which was this big community activist group but they also did a lot of beach parties and park barbeques and stuff. Jake said his brother had met a girl there, I mentioned maybe we should see if Tom could get us in sometime.

Homer – Jake's dog – came into the bedroom as we were talking bullshit about what this would do for our summer job prospects.

"Hey, Boy," Jake replied cheerfully as Homer fell down at Jake's feet, tail thumping across the floor.

Jake went down to pet him, and then froze. He looked at me, his face twisted in thought. Then he nodded.

He touched Homer.

"Concentrate on the dog," I said in my best Obi Wan voice. "Become the dog."

Jake shot me a look. Heh.

"I think I did it," he said a few seconds later, lifting his hand up to his face. Homer was out of it for a few seconds more after that, then started wagging his tail and looking up at Jake like nothing had happened, like Jake hadn't just zapped some of his DNA and beamed it up to space or whatever.

"So now what?" Jake asked, looking at me. "I just think about Homer and that's it?"

I shrugged. "I guess. It's not like I just think about you and poof I turned into you. You have to kinda think about changing." Which in hindsight is really good, because if we started turning into animals every time we thought about them in passing, we were gonna blow our cover real quick.

Jake nodded, closing his eyes.

"Wait!" He looked up at me, startled.

"Yeh?"

"What about him?" I pointed to Homer. "We can't have two of you – of him – in the same place. If something happens…"

"Everyone's out the house, it's jus-" Jake started to protest, but stopped. "Bad habit to get into though."

I nodded. Yeah, we were alone but blowing our security on Jake's first morph would be needlessly stupid.

"Let's go for a walk," he said, giving me a shaky grin. "You probably should practice too."

Which is how I found myself planning to walk my best friend while disguised as my best friend. This shit was whack. Jake drove to the beach and we were in one of the little changing rooms off the pier. It was empty – summer season wasn't here yet and it was overcast and windy. Even so, we made sure to doublecheck before sneaking into the last booth. Jake stepped up on the little ledge they give you to put your bags and clothes and stuff while you're changing. The last thing we needed was someone coming in and seeing a pair of human legs transform into paws underneath the divider.

"Let's do this," Jake whispered.

"Not you too," I groaned.

Jake closed his eyes. His ears grew out and moved on his head and then these giant canines popped out of his mouth. His ears still looked human though. Then fur just exploded out of his body except for the top of his head. I could see Jake twitch, but he didn't open his eyes.

"You got this, bro." I said, trying not to heave as I heard squishing and crunching as Jake's internal organs rearranged themselves. His hands fused into paws then kinda shifted out, and I was looking at a five foot something upright dog-boy when at last he began to shrink down to Homer-size. With a _floop_ he disappeared into his clothes, and not long after Homer burrowed out from under Jake's t-shirt.

((This is wild! Let's do it again! Whoa, someone had Pop-Tarts in here recently!))

"Jake! Jake!" I hissed, as Jake pushed against my leg wagging his tail. I was gonna remember this for later but now we had to get serious. "Jake, can you hear me?"

((Hey Marco! Yeah, I can hear you! We going out on the beach!?))

"Jake, get a grip. You in control, man?"

A pause, Jake made a little whine.

((Yeah! Yeah, I got this! Man, this is nuts! Being a dog but yeah, I'm in control!))

"Ok. Good. Can you uh… turn away dude. This is a little weird."

((Yeah! No problem!))

Jake jumped off the ledge and turned toward the door. I undressed down to my boxers and began my own change… into Jake.

I won't go into the details one way or the other. I became Jake, that's all you need to know. I had a second Jake brain in my head, but it didn't have memories or anything it was just kinda there. I looked into the little face mirror they always put in these places, for who knows why. Jake's face stared back at me. This was in a way even weirder than Cassie becoming a horse.

((Marco! You done yet! Let's go!))

((On my wa-)) Whoa.

I could thought-speak in morph. Even when morphed as a human. This was big.

"I'm on my way" I said, deliberately moving my mouth, making sure I spoke the words. I looked at my – at Jake's – reflection. "On my way. Way. Waaaaaay. PeterPiperpickedapickledpepper." Huh.

I shook my head, then dressed myself in Jake's clothes. I put my own clothes in a locker, and with a "C'mon Boy!" we headed out onto the beach.

Jake started running ahead, tail wagging as he sniffed the edge of the surf. ((Crabs! Marco there was a crab here! I don't see it now! And lots of salt! Salt everywhere! I think that guy over there has tacos!))

I whistled. It took me a try or two with Jake's mouth but I managed it.

"Come here, Homer, come here!"

Jake turned towards me, then started running for me, bounding fast.

"Who's a good boy! Yes you is!"

((Screw you, Marco!)) Jake laughed as he rolled over on his belly.

* * *

 **A/N: Don't worry, Elfangor hasn't stolen Tobias' signature morph.**


	4. The Discovery: Rachel I

**Arc 1: The Discovery**

 **Chapter 3**

 **Rachel**

* * *

My name is Rachel. Yadda yadda yadda can't tell you my last name or where I live. You know the drill. Jake dropped me off back at my home and then him and Marco went off to work on their "English papers" which is obviously boy talk for goof around playing video games and then Monday morning blame it on our super secret war council.

Me? I'd already finished everything that I had to do – juggling three major extra-curriculars _and_ holding down a part-time job really gives you a sense of focus. Plus my mom's always been the no-nonsense type when it comes to that sort of personal discipline. So while everyone else needed some time to reflect on what we'd done, I was ready to get to it.

Don't get me wrong, I knew we didn't have any leads just yet. But that was why we had to go out and _find_ them. There was an alien invasion happening right on our door step, there wasn't time to just hang around and wait!

I grabbed an apple off the kitchen counter, taking a bite while thinking about what we could do. Strategy is really simple when you get down to it. On the one hand, we wanted to make the Yeerk army smaller. Preferably extinct. Nothing I could do about that right now. But on the other side of the equation, we wanted to make our own army bigge-

"Boo, Rachel!"

I jumped, turning around in an instant.

"Ha ha! Gotcha!"

I rolled my eyes and gave Jordan a small poke. My middle sister, she's two years younger than me and at that age where she's simultaneously trying to be my best friend like she's too mature now to hang with Sara, the baby in the family… but also doing her level best to aggravate me as much as she can get away with. Thankfully, I'm the mature one.

"What do you want, pipsqueak," I asked before taking another bite of my apple.

Jordan shrugged. "Mom took Sara to the movies."

"Mmhm," I replied, my response on autopilot as I went right back to thinking about how to take the fight to the Yeerks.

"I'm bored."

"Mmhm."

My sister let out a long sigh as if _she_ was the one with the weight of the world on her shoulders. "Let's go someplace."

And then it hit me, the absolutely perfect plan. It was genius, a way to kill two Yeerks with one stone.

"Huh? Yeah, sounds good," I replied, thinking fast. "I was gonna call Melissa actually, but what if instead we all met up at The Gardens? We haven't been in forever."

Jordan took a minute to weigh that, like she wasn't the one complaining about being bored and not-so-subtly trying to come up with an excuse to hang. "Yeah, that sounds alright," she said at last.

"Great, let me just get my coat and call Mel and we'll head out."

I looked at the wall clock. "That gives us twenty to get to Maple and catch the bus – grab your stuff."

She's a good kid, and even with the look of 'disinterested fourteen year old,' she definitely bounced now that big sis was giving her attention.

I called Melissa, and she was really gung ho about coming out. I was glad – even before this whole alien invasion kicked off Mel and I had been drifting apart. She used to hang out with us all the time – we were in gymnastics together – but she'd been gloomy and kinda distant the last few months.

I'm not saying I was thrilled at the idea of using my friend, but if this was what brought her out of her funk, maybe 'Phase II' as I was already calling it would go even better than expected. Melissa even saved us a bus ride; her dad apparently overheard us talking and offered to pick us up and drive us all to The Gardens himself.

Melissa's dad is the vice-principal at our high school. It was weird in a way, because until two years ago I never really thought about what her dad did, and now I saw him every day and he was suddenly this authority figure. But he's a really nice guy, he was always very encouraging to all the girls at our gymnastics meets and has always been really big on community stuff. Apparently, he was headed to The Gardens anyway – some big community group called The Sharing was looking at doing some big fund raiser to help endangered species or something. The whole ride to The Gardens he went on about it, and Melissa was eating it up, more Daddy's girl than I'd seen her in forever. Maybe it was really hard having your dad suddenly being your principle.

"You kids stay out of trouble," he said in his 'school' voice, but gave us a really exaggerated dad wink.

"Bye Mr. Chapman," Jordan and I called out as he drove off towards the administration building, leaving us at the main gate.

"Bye, dad."

The Gardens is this really cool all-in-one zoo and amusement park. We used to come all the time – Cassie's mom works here so we always got discount tickets and sneak peeks at new exhibits. Then Marco's dad hit a rough patch after his mom died and he didn't have any money to spend on things like goofing around watching animals, so he and Jake stopped coming, even if they never really said anything about it. Cassie started working practically full time at the farm and I guess we all just kinda felt it was 'for kids', but it's really a great place and being here now I realized how much I'd missed it.

"Rides first!" Jordan exclaimed as we entered.

"Do you have your birthday money?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"Forgot it."

I sighed. She probably really did honestly forget – I swear my sister thinks she's an adult but as soon as she's hanging out with me she regresses ten years.

On the other hand, this worked out really well for 'Phase II'.

"Fine," I exclaimed, pretending to be annoyed. Which wasn't that hard, cause I was still giving up more than an hour's pay at the mall so my sister would be away for a bit. I handed her a ten dollar bill. "Two rides. Melissa and I will wait for you. Be back in twenty. Go!"

Jordan looked like she wanted to negotiate, but then thought better and took the money and ran. I rolled my eyes at Melissa – so easy!

"We should do this more often," I said to Melissa as we watched Jordan waiting in line for one of the park's two roller coasters.

"I'd like that," Melissa said with a smile, even though it looked a little forced.

"How's gymnastics?" Between soccer and lacrosse, gymnastics for me had become a filler sport – my balance beam sucks and I'm varsity squad for both the other two, so it was a no-brainer which one I had to drop. But Melissa is really good; there was talk of her joining the Junior Olympics team a few years ago but nothing came of it. Even so…

"It's alright," she said with a shrug. "I dunno…"

I frowned. "Everything ok?"

She shrugged again, eyes firmly fixed on roller coaster. "Yeah, I'm fine. Everyone's just been real busy," she gave a little laugh. "I'm just being a drama queen. It's fine. Really."

I reached over and squeezed her hand. "We should definitely hang out more this summer," I said, a not-quite-promise, not-quite-apology. "Season's over now and I get _the best_ employee discounts at the mall."

For the first time she gave me a real smile.

"Totally."

It almost made me feel bad that I was scouting out our first recruit. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't like I was planning on telling her about the invasion right then and there, and I wasn't going to actually _do_ anything without running it by the others, but Melissa had been my friend as long as any of the rest of us had been. Any other night, it just as easily could have been her running into Elfangor with me and Jake instead of Cassie. It would be just like old times, except instead of taking on the crosstown high school, we'd be kicking alien ass back to whatever planet the Yeerks came from!

Just as soon as we knew she wasn't already taken. I twitched at that. Melissa gave me a look.

"My nose tickles," I explained. She giggled. We chatted for a bit until Jordan came back and we went into the zoo proper.

The second part of Operation: Garden Gambit didn't go quite so well. It wasn't a _failure_ but in my excitement of coming up with the plan, I forgot I had no way to _touch_ any of the animals that had danced in my imagination. Oh sure, I could have gone into the petting zoo, but if I had a limited number of morphs, I wasn't going to waste it on a petting goat or a lamb. No, I wanted the big guns.

But I've always loved shopping, and window shopping _definitely_ counts when you can't get the real thing. At least I could always tell the others I was checking out potential morphs, getting ideas for what I – what we – wanted and how to divvy them out. _I_ was calling shotgun on the Grizzly though. And the Bull Elephant. Oh, maybe the Alligator. I actually laughed out loud in the monkey house – I'd bet my both my favorite handbags that Marco was going to pick Gorilla. Jake was our leader; Lion, maybe? Maybe Cassie should take the Elephant. I didn't really know Tobias or Elfangor well enough to guess what they'd pick. Rhino? Panther? Viper?

"Wow Rachel, you are reeeeeeeally into this," Jordan snickered.

I shrugged, keeping it cool. "I guess I realized I really missed this place." My voice turned syrupy. "It's been so long since I've had a wittle bittie sister to come here with."

"Be nice," Melissa chided, though she was laughing too.

I had another brilliant insight. A little test for Melissa that would be totally normal. "If you could be any animal on the planet, what would you be?" A Yeerk would unquestionably think about Andalites, but it's the sort of question that gets asked a million times every day in a zoo.

"Ocelot!" Jordan said at once. "They were soooooo cute." She paused. "Or maybe a fox? They were really funny."

"What about you, Mel?" I asked, keeping my voice super casual.

"I really liked the otters," she said after a moment. A perfectly human response. No conflict at all. "Or a panda? The tigers were adorable."

"What about you?" Jordan asked.

"A b-" I stopped. If I said _bear_ and then a bear showed up on the news attacking aliens, would this conversation ever somehow be linked to me?

"A buh?" Jordan asked, raising an eyebrow. No idea where she got that from. "Did we pass one of those?"

I scoffed. "There's no such thing as a 'buh'. I was gonna say _Buffalo_. I'd have every lacrosse scholarship in the country with that sort of ramming power."

"How would you hold your crosse?" Jordan asked, and Melissa looked curious as well.

I shrugged. "Tie it to my horns, _obviously_."

"Okaaaaay," Jordan replied as if _she_ were the one with the weird younger sister.

It was a great afternoon. I ended up buying one of those programs they sell that goes through all the animals in the zoo – there were just too many to remember and it would be good to have a list. Plus I'd have something to really show the others, even if Cassie probably already owned one. It was like a Macy's catalogue but for alien guerillas.

Melissa's dad texted her when he was finished, and we made our way back out. By the time we got back to my house, my mom and little sister were already home. Melissa and her dad came in for a little bit, my mom and her dad making the kind of grown-up small talk that grown-ups do. Melissa looked anxious. Then just before they left, she called out, "Hey Rach, do you wanna come round and have dinner? I feel really bad about having to bum that last ticket off of you."

I could feel my brow furrow. Melissa hadn't borrowed anything. Her eyes were intense.

"I'd love to," I replied, keeping the question out of my voice. "If it's alright with your dad, of course." I gave Mr. Chapman a smile.

He grinned. "That's fine with me, unless you all have plans?" He looked at my mother. She shook her head. "That settles in then, dinner at the Chapmans. I'll bring you back home by eight. School night."

Trust a vice-principal to be a stickler for that sort of thing.

"I wouldn't want to put you out. Jake's on the same street – I'll give him a call and he can bring me back, no problem."

Chapman just shrugged and moved to the car, he wasn't going to argue logistics with me if my mom wasn't upset about it, and she wasn't. She knows I'm a trustworthy daughter. Good grades, scholarship track, no crazy parties. I had a lot of free reign. And with the Yeerk invasion underway, it was time to cash in.

Dinner at the Chapmans was great. Mr. and Mrs. Chapman were thrilled to see me, and asked all about our time at The Gardens. Melissa had had a gymnastics meet last week and came in second overall and first on the uneven bars, so there was a little bragging and Melissa turned bright pink. I asked Mr. Chapman about The Sharing since I know my cousin Tom is really involved in it, and he went on about how great it was bringing the community together and how he'd had a really productive talk with The Gardens and they were tentatively going to have a big fundraiser as soon as the summer started.

"You should come," he said after finishing up dessert. "And bring your cousin too. It's such a shame you kids don't have more time together." He chuckled, "I guess that's partly my fault, huh?"

Melissa asked if I could stay and watch a movie, but Mr. Chapman said he had to put his foot down. If I was going to Jake's he couldn't make me be home by eight if I _really_ didn't want to, but rules were rules and he wasn't going to 'aid-and-abet'.

I lied, told him I'd already texted Jake and he was expected me anyway. But I promised Melissa we would do this again real soon. I even proposed a beach trip for next weekend. She gave me a small smile. "I'd like that."

I'm leaving out one tiny detail. At some point during dinner when he came to patter around and explore what all the fuss was about, I kinda maybe sorta acquired Melissa's pet cat, a black and white tomcat named – I'm not kidding – Fluffer McKitty. To be fair, Melissa was nine at the time, and the two of us had spend an afternoon coming up with names together. To be honest with you, Fluffer lucked out over some of the alternatives.

So far, Operation: Melissa Morpher hadn't given me any red flags. But would a Yeerk reveal itself in front of an animal in a way it wouldn't in front of a human? Only one way to find out.

I walked most of the block back to Jake's house, then dashed around the back of a house with one of those big wooden decks that jut out the side. All the lights were out. Hidden in the shadows and behind two empty trashcans, I did my first morph.

Ok, I had been hoping for a grizzly bear, but it was still pretty wild for my first time. My hands melted into paws first, and there was this really strange crunching noise as my tail bone grew, and grew, and grew. My spine did things that would have brought a chiropractor to tears. I started to shrink, realizing too late that my brand new cardigan was now lying on some grubby patch of cement. At least it was out of the way so it probably would still be here when mission accomplished, but ugggh.

Before I could finish contemplating what morphing was going to do to my wardrobe, I was a cat.

I was amazing. I mean I guess I always knew that but it was like my eyes were suddenly open to the coolness that was me. I took a step forward. Whoa.

Forget being some stupid buffalo with a crosse strapped to its horn. I would win every gold medal in gymnastic Olympics for the next decade. Jump three times my own height? No problem. Just because I hadn't _done_ it yet didn't wipe out the assurance that I could. Balance beam? Psh, cut it in half and I'd _still_ cross it with all the difficulty that you lumbering buffoons manage a crosswalk.

I was the queen of awesome. I was the-

There was a mouse. Somewhere, somewhere, some- there!

I pounced. A little voice in the back of my head said _no!_ I missed. Thanks, voice, your fault, definitely not mine.

The voice was me.

Me. Rachel. A human turned into a cat, not an actual cat. A cat on a mission.

I could still admit it was all very, very cool. The mouse scurried under a hole at the edge of the concrete. I turned up my nose and started padding back towards the Chapmans. As long as the mouse knew I _let_ it get away, it was fine.

A part of me knew that the rest of the… we really needed a name – the rest of the group was going to be annoyed that I did my first mission solo. And yeah, it really wasn't a big deal, it didn't _need_ more people. And in my defense, I had it all planned out and was ready to bail if it wasn't gonna work out. But like I said, I'd known Melissa for years. I'd known Fluffy literally all his life. I knew he spent his evenings prowling outside, before coming back inside a few hours after dark to settle down.

Tonight was no exception.

So I prowled a little bit anyway to make sure, but as soon as I knew it was safe – _and it was_ – I jumped through Melissa's open window. She was playing some music. All very human things to do.

And she was crying. Like really, really crying. Big sobs shaking her body as she bit her lip to keep them in. Clutching her knees. Holy crap, I was expecting her to just be hanging around and a little part of me was prepared for some one-hundred-eighty-degree-character-twist-she's-really-an-evil-alien-mastermind but…

Does it make sense if I tell you this was kinda worse?

"Meow." I jumped off the window sill and onto her desk, then down again in two seamless jumps. _Whoa._

She sniffled. "Hi Fluffy." She gave me a watery smile. "You're home early."

I looked up at her, not really sure what to do. She let out a wail of agony.

I jumped onto her bed. In a second, she had her knees down and pulled me into her lap. "Meow!"

"Oh what have I done," she whispered to me. "What have I done? Why are they doing this to me?"

I caught myself from accidentally thought-speaking to her, but God it was hard.

She cried, petting me with increasingly wet hands every time she wiped her eyes.

"Why did everything change?"

It occurred to me that other than Melissa's strangled sobs and her music, the house was completely silent. Nothing was happening anywhere else in the house. For that matter, why was Melissa bawling her eyes out and her mom and dad weren't here? I'd only been gone fifteen minutes at the most. Where was the happy, laughing family I had literally just walked out the door of?

Something was very, very wrong. And obviously, I jumped to the first conclusion. I hoped it wasn't true.

On the other hand, given that the Chapmans were ignoring their grieving daughter, maybe I wished I was right. Maybe I wished it wasn't the Chapmans doing this at all, but some evil space slugs.

I knew I had a mission, but to be honest I think I'd already solved it. Melissa wasn't a Controller. If anything, I actually got us a step further, and possibly had found us our first Yeerk lead.

I wish I hadn't.

I stayed with Melissa for an hour. But my morph had a time limit, my mom would call Mr. Chapman-the-maybe-Controller who would call Jake if I didn't show up soon, and there was always the chance the real Fluffer McKitty might either bound through the window or else start clawing at the door.

Hiding while aliens blew up a ship was easier than leaving my friend to her tears. But I did it.

I vowed that next time, we'd come bringing vengeance.

Jake drove me home. Or rather, Jake drove me home while chewing me out about morphing by myself and going on a mission without telling anyone. I let him for a bit, my heart wasn't really in arguing.

"I get it, Jake. Jeez. I'm sorry," I said at long last, voice maybe a little snippy. I looked out the window, thinking about Melissa.

I think something in my tone caught up with him. He stopped talking, looked over at me.

"We all need to be careful," he said after a moment. I shrugged. "This afternoon, I almost morphed Homer in my bedroom. While Homer was right there with me. Marco and I went to the beach instead."

I turned to look at my cousin. "I guess all of us have morphed now."

Jake sighed. "Yeah, guess it's official, huh?"

"Yeah."

The drive to my house isn't more than ten minutes, and we'd spent half of that with Jake telling me I'd been an idiot. He pulled into the gas station near my house and got out, coming back a minute later with a root beer and a Diet Coke.

"Sorry for screaming," he said, handing me the Coke then closing his door. We sat there for a few minutes in the parking lot.

"Sorry for not letting you know what I was doing," I said after taking a sip.

"So… what do you think of my plan, to recruit more people?"

Jake took a second to answer, I could tell he was thinking it over and wasn't sure what to say. He's really easy to read sometimes. "It's not bad… we could probably use more support. But not getting caught is way more important, and it's not like the morphing power is ours to give." He paused. "We probably should see if this is even a war we can fight before we recruit more soldiers."

"I don't think we have a choice if we can fight it or not. We have to, no matter what."

Jake took another drink. "Yeah. You're right." He stretched his hands on the steering wheel, fingers squeezing the rim. "I'm not saying you're wrong. In the long run, we _do_ have to recruit. But we have to be really, _really_ careful. We can't afford to screw up. And if you think Melissa's family are controll-"

"She's not though!"

"No… but how long until she is?"

I had no response. Part of what was pushing me was that exact fear. If Mr. and Mrs. Chapman were Controllers, then a crying Melissa was a definite loose end.

"We need to talk to Elfangor," Jake said at last. "We need some idea of how Yeerks operate, what their strategies are. Something else to think about," Jake finished, sounding very tired.

Jake stopped then, staring at his can. "C'mon, what is it?" I asked, giving him a push.

"You know Elfangor expects us to… kill people."

I didn't know what to say about that. I'd caught that back when Elfangor expressed anger at not killing any Yeerks when his ship blew up, but we'd all be kinda dancing around it.

"I talked to Marco already. I have no idea how to bring it up to Cassie."

"Yeah, I can't imagine that going down well," I said, trying to make a joke but it came out sounding really morbid.

Jake gave a nervous chuckle anyway. "He's an alien. For him, they're just… I dunno, meat shields for Yeerks? They're expedient. But they're people. Good people."

"People we know." I finished, thinking of the Chapmans. Jake nodded.

"I don't know," I thought aloud. "But I know that if we don't do anything, we're all going to end up slaves in our own heads."

"Can we trust him though? I mean even if we do – if we do this. And what it means, then will he at least try to limit casualties. Or just…" Jake looked sick.

I took another drink, more to have a reason not to speak. It tasted vile in my mouth.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, cuz," I finally replied. "For now, we don't even know any Controllers… well, not that we're one hundred percent sure of. Maybe we'll figure out a way to tell someone about this without risking ourselves. You never know."

"Yeah. That's true." He didn't sound like he really believed me. That was fine, I wasn't sure I believed it either.

"How was being a dog?" I asked, changing the subject completely. Jake looked relieved.

A small smile flickered on Jake's face. "Really fun. You always figure dogs are having a great time but… you have no idea. It's like everyday is a beach party. And the smells! I mean there's pop-tarts and hotdogs and salt and all, but it's so much more than that." His smiled faded a bit. "There were these three guys playing frisbee on the beach looking like they were having a great time – Marco said they looked fine. But they smelt angry. I didn't even know anger had a smell."

Jake looked at the radio clock and shook his head, turning on the ignition. "Guess we better get to your place. How was being a cat?"

"Like being the queen of the universe, only a little more powerful. When we acquire battle morphs, you should seriously consider one of the big cats; you'll never want to go dog, ever again."

"Don't knock it till you've tried it."

"Whatever you say, Dogboy."


	5. The Discovery: Tobias I

**Arc 1: The Discovery**

 **Chapter 4**

 **Tobias**

* * *

My name is Tobias. I skipped school on Monday.

I know, I know. But trust me, it wasn't a risk. I'd spent years bouncing between both coasts of the country between an aunt who hated me and an uncle who didn't care. I'd never done anything really stupid but a little bit of truancy comes with the territory. Nobody was going to freak out because I didn't show up at school the Monday after an alien ship got blown to pieces in the middle of town.

School just felt kinda pointless. We were the only resistance between a bunch of hostile aliens and Earth's survival. There were so many more important things to learn than listening to my history teacher drone on. None of that mattered. All those normal lives I never had, they were an illusion. What I had now – this was real.

I went to see Elfangor. Which turned out to take a lot longer than it should have. Why hadn't we all acquired birds yesterday? I get everyone was freaked out but there were several other birds of prey besides the admittedly very cool hawk that Elfangor morphed, and probably enough seagulls for each of us to have had one.

Come to think of it, I was the only one who didn't even have a morph _from this planet_.

Without a quick way to get to Cassie's, I took the bus downtown instead. Nobody cares about a teenager who probably should be in school being downtown unless he's being an obvious nuisance. Especially just before summer. I'm not that kind of kid, so hooky in the city was the easy part.

I came up with a plan on the bus and went to the mall. I looked at a few video games and even went into the bookshop for twenty minutes and browsed the scifi, just to look like a mall rat. I spent a good bit of time just hanging around, so even if anyone here was a Controller and they recognized me, I wouldn't look suspicious.

Then I went into the pet shop, past the cages of puppies and kittens at the front they use to lure in parents with little kids, and headed for the bird cages. Ten minutes later, I left before the looks from the manager turned into anything more proactive and got me kicked out. But by then, I'd gotten a finger on a cockatiel, and that was all I needed.

Then I went back home. That was kinda dumb, but I forgot about the whole clothes issue until I was actually ready to morph. It's not like my wardrobe is so full I can afford to just leave it hanging around behind a dumpster or something.

By the time I flew out to Cassie's and managed to find an Andalite that was actively trying to avoid being seen, it wasn't like there was much of a school day left, which was annoying.

((Tobias? Are you not with the others?)) Elfangor asked as he finally got into range of my thought-speak broadcast.

((They're busy at the moment)) I hedged. Apparently Andalites aren't up to date on the American public school system, because he took that in stride.

((I see. Earth is an amazing planet. There were more species of birds in your meeting place yesterday than exist on the Andalite homeworld. Your current morph is clearly related to my own, but so different.))

I landed on a branch just above him. ((I guess. So… birds never took off on your homeworld?))

Elfangor's stalk eyes were fixed on me as one of his hooves almost idly crushed a small patch of moss at the base of my tree. ((Our gravity is approximately eleven-and-a-quarter percent greater than your own. Our biome favors denser skeletons and greater musculature. The few species that are analogous to birds would nonetheless be unrecognizable here.))

We stood & perched in silence for a few minutes. Elfangor went back to hoofing at the moss. I wondered what he was up to but it seemed rude to ask.

((How long have you been in morph?)) he said at last.

((I don't know. No more than an hour, maybe an hour and a half? Navigating from the sky isn't easy at first, and it took a while to find you.))

The stalk eyes swiveled. ((You should demorph. Idling in morph is something we are taught to avoid very early in training. Never stay in a morph if you do not need to.))

I mentally shrugged, but fluttered down to ground level and turned back human.

((I wanted to tal-))

"I wanted to talk to you anyway," I said as my mouth finished forming. "We need to know more about the Yeerks. The way they think and how they act. How they go about invading planets."

((I am afraid I may be less help than you hope,)) Elfangor started, sounding slightly offended at the thought.

((I was trained as an off-world fighter pilot. There are certain elements of the Yeerk psyche and patterns of operations that are taught to all cadets, but my knowledge as to how they would conduct an on-world infestation in the particulars is very limited.)

"Better than nothing," I said, sitting down against the back of the tree. "Hit me with it."

((Very well. Let us walk.))

I gestured down to my bare feet. "Not really up for walking in the woods."

((Ah, I forgot how dependent humans are on artificial hooves. Morph me.))

That was the last thing I'd expected.

Elfangor must have sensed my hesitance. ((You will need to be able to show the Yeerks another Andalite form, and we are a formidable species in a fight in our own right. Please. I should like to see you morph me.))

I nodded, slowly. From a cockatiel to a boy to an Andalite while taking a day off from school. I was practically living _Ferris Beuller_.

Of course, I'd already acquired Elfangor. Had even morphed him once. But not to just hang out and chat about the coming war.

I turned blue. My back bent and I stumbled forward, crouched over as my arms started to shrink and two extra fingers popped out of each hand. A _crunch_ signaled two extra legs growing out of my chest. A weight in my back as I sprouted the thick coiled muscle of the Andalite tail. None of it as bizarre as when I suddenly had an extra pair of eyes that seemed to naturally look anywhere _except_ forward.

((We evolved from a prey species, millons of years before our tailblades developed)) Elfangor supplied as I struggled to get them under control. ((Do not fight them, keep your main eyes focused on myself and allow the stalk eyes to wander.))

I felt… happy? Not wildly so but there was an underlying assurance and optimism to the Andalite brain. On top of the other sensations: three-hundred-and-sixty degree sight, the three slits in my face where my human mouth would have been were for breathing, a tail that hovered over my left flank, ready to strike as casually as humans walk, and…

((I eat and drink… through my _feet_?))

((Yes.))

We started to walk… canter? – through the woods, in the direction Cassie and I had walked with him yesterday when the others had left. Elfangor let me get used to my new Andalite body – his body. Helping me learn how to open and close my hooves. Adjusting to my new eyes. Dealing with a musculature built for a gravity heavier than I was used to. That sort of thing.

After twenty-two minutes (Andalites had literal biological clocks!) we talked shop, and it was a hell of a lot more information than 'limited'. I mean sure he didn't know who was a Controller or exactly how many Yeerks were on the planet or who they would go for next, but what I picked up in the next few hours (morphing back and forth precisely seventy-five minutes each time) was infinitely more than I'd had yesterday.

((So we're looking for what? Swimming pools? Lakes?))

((No. The Yeerk Pool is not something the Yeerks would keep above ground. The 'pool' itself is effectively a broth, a nutrient rich body of water that the Yeerk absorbs along with and with the aid of Kandrona radiation. Even during the battle for the Hork-Bajir homeworld, where the Yeerk invasion was overt from the start, they built their pool in a protected, enclosed space.))

I remembered the term _Hork-Bajir_ , which led to a discussion on the reptilian, seven-feet tall, viciously strong and covered in protruding exoskeleton blades strong enough to behead a human – shock troops of the Yeerk Empire that had once been a gentle species of herbivores.

It went on from there. Taxxons: giant omnivorous and cannibalistic worms that had given themselves over the Yeerks in exchange for new and exotic meats. Knowledge that there were dozens of other species that the Yeerks had caught in bits and pieces; a trading ship here, a colony there. We would be their fourth – and largest – planet-wide conquest if we failed. At least three other invasions were occurring right now as well, from an amphibious race of mind-reading frog people to a race that were like Andalites minus the tail and the morphing, and with two hundred cups of coffee instead.

We circled back to the Kandrona; named for the Yeerks home sun, one of the few worlds to produce life while orbiting a pulsar, which from the sounds of it is a really funky kind of star – hey as a kid you either get into Dinosaurs or Outer Space; I chose Dinosaurs.

The Yeerks required what they called 'Kandrona rays' to metabolize nutrients, and were able to conquer faraway worlds like our own through artificial Kandrona that produced the necessary radiation. I didn't understand a lot of it, but I knew this – the Yeerks needed to get into the Yeerk Pool once every three days. If they didn't, they died. If they died, we won.

((We should go see Cassie,)) I said at last, as we dipped our hooves in a brook. ((She can call the others – we need to attack the Yeerk Pool. We need to destroy it.)) I began to demorph.

((Are the others now free?)) He asked.

I shrugged, once more human. "Should be. School's been out for an hour or so now. You wanna come?"

We became birds. Being a cockatiel is great and all – flying is pretty awesome no matter how you slice it – but I couldn't help feeling second-class next to the hawk. The cockatiel brain felt it too.

We flew to Cassie's barn, half my brain wetting itself every time it caught a glimpse of the hawk. We landed in the loft, what I didn't expect to see was the other four in the middle of an argument.

((Hey, what's up?))

No "Hi Tobias" or "Sup?" They all froze. Marco actually put his fists up. They looked around frantically.

I laughed. ((What's going on?))

((Tobias is not a Controller. He has been with me for four of your Earth hours.))

 _What the hell?!_

((We are up here.)) He let out a screech, drawing all their eyes upward. He flew down, taking a lower perch. I followed, though my cockatiel brain wasn't willing to land anywhere near where the hawk could gut me with a talon swipe.

It's not hard to say exactly what their expressions were: a combination of anger, relief, annoyance, and disbelief.

Except Marco, he just looked pissed.

"You have any idea how much this messed with us today," he started. "The day after we all agree to join a live action game of _Alien vs Predator_ and then you don't show up at school?"

I jumped on my perch, a little annoyed. ((I thought we weren't hanging out at school together anyway, not blow our cover. Who cares?))

"We care," Cassie butted in before Marco could start up again. "We wondered if you had been captured. We wondered if –" she trailed off.

((You wondered if they were coming after you next,)) I finished. ((If _I_ was coming after you next.))

Jake shook his head. "Not you. A Yeerk controlling you. You're on our team."

I took a second. Jake had taken a step out for me when he didn't need to, and against his best friend. The others had made him leader yesterday and I hadn't objected but I hadn't exactly agreed to just do what he told me either. But he deserved something. I probably shouldn't have gone off without telling them.

((I'll make sure to stay in touch.)) I looked at all of them, as if seeing them for the first time as a group. ((So did we fly in on a… rescue mission?))

"Kinda." Rachel. "Rescue mission, evacuation mission. Find-Yeerks-and-start-ripping-heads mission. We hadn't really decided yet."

((Well, I can help with the last one,)) I said, grabbing the chance to change the topic to something that actually mattered. ((I've spent all afternoon learning about the Yeerks…))

((…So the way I see it, all we need to do is find the Yeerk Pool and destroy it,)) I concluded after giving them the rundown of the Yeerk's obvious weakness.

Rachel grinned, looking equal parts beautiful and wild. "And we might even have a Controller to follow," she let it hang there for a moment, her face now marred with a scowl. "Mr. Chapman."

((No way… for real? Our school is being run by Yeerks?))

"Looks like it," Marco said, sounding unhappy.

"Is that the part that seriously annoys you?" Rachel asked Marco, sounding kinda incredulous. I felt so too.

"Yes, it is." Marco said, crossing his arms in a show of defiance. He went on when nobody responded. "There's what, a thousand kids in our high school? So if they've got the Vice-Principle, maybe they've got the Principle too. The teachers. Then what? Then comes _us_."

Oh… _oh_.

"Yeah," Marco went on, seeing the horror dawning on Rachel's and Jake's and Cassie's faces. "Imagine over a thousand controllers together for eight hours a day. Classes canceled as we all becomes full time operators in the Yeerk plans. It's a hub. Then the parents. Families. One day you're going to math class then _BAM_ your friends grab you and throw a slug in your ear."

Silence.

"How likely is that?" Jake asked, looking at Elfangor. It sounded less like he was doubting Marco and more like he was trying to figure out the exact schedule.

Elfangor's beady hawk eyes focused on Jake.

((I don't know.))

Marco looked ready to riot.

((I can make some assumptions though. In the long run, this is indeed likely to be the Yeerk's plan; as it would be in any place where humans congregate in regular, distinct groups. Infesting natural groupings allows the Yeerks to operate without having to disguise their true selves.))

"Exactly!" Marco interrupted. "If Chapman's a controller, he wastes eight hours a day pretending to be human. But if the entire school is made up of Controllers, he can spend those eight hours doing Yeerk things without having to pretend that he cares about kids failing math quizzes."

"Melissa isn't a Controller though, even if her parents are." Rachel interrupted. What the hell had I missed in the past twenty-four hours?! "Wouldn't it make more sense to infest Melissa?"

Marco shrugged.

((Why do we think Mr. Chapman is a controller?)) I asked in the pause.

((This makes little sense.)) Elfangor replied after Jake and Rachel brought us up to speed on their adventure last night. ((The daughter would be a liability and as Marco rightly points out, a time sink for potentially two Yeerks.))

"Didn't seem like a time loss to me," Rachel grumbled. "I couldn't have been out the house for five minutes before Mr. and Mrs. Chapman disappeared.

Cassie held up a hand. "We don't _know_ he's a Controller. Shouldn't out first step be confirming if he is or not, and then trying to locate where the Yeerks are hiding their pool?"

Marco nodded. "That, and coming up with a plan if we do have to get out of dodge." His jaw twitched. "I'm not leaving my dad. And I'm not becoming a Controller-"

((You are all rightfully concerned at the prospect of becoming a Controller, but you may rest assured that such a thing is impossible.))

((What?)) I asked.

((Many years ago a situation occurred and we recognized the need to ensure the Yeerks never again had the chance to acquire a morph-capable host. One component of the _Escafil Device_ is that it makes a change to the user's base DNA structure; arteries in the brain will burst should Yeerk DNA come into contact with them.

"Exploding brains, what fresh and exciting hell is this?" Marco fumed. "And you didn't think to tell us this before we touched your morphing cube?"

Elfangor shifted on his perch towards Marco, flicking his wings once. ((Would you not rather be dead than a host?)) The question wasn't a challenge, it simply was.

Nobody answered, myself included. Just when you thought you understood what was at stake you got hit with something else.

"That's not your decision to make," Jake said at last.

I don't claim any expertise on hawk facial expressions, but I think Elfangor disagreed.

"So!" Jake said after a moment, clapping his hands to show we were moving on from the horrifying prospect of our brains being blown up from the inside. "We need to find the Yeerk Pool. We need to confirm Mr. Chapman is a Controller or else find someone else. We need to come up with a plan if the Yeerks try and infest the entire school so we don't die. And we need a way to get our families out of dodge if it all hits the fan anyway."

"Anything else?"

"Morphs," Cassie said. "Even if we have a limit we can't afford to just pick up morphs as we need them. Because we might not know we need until it's too late."

We all nodded, myself especially, thinking back to this morning and the realization I had zero morphs that could be seen in public. I hadn't exactly fixed the issue with the cockatiel. Which reminded me…

((We can take care of one big problem right now,)) I said. ((We all need bird morphs. It's fantastic. You guys can't imagine what flying is like.))

"Can't help but improve our room to maneuver," Marco added. He turned to Cassie, "What do you got?"

She shrugged, then gestured vaguely around the barn. "New birds come and go all the time. Right now we've got a two harriers, an osprey, a bunch of seagulls, and the hawk that Elfangor acquired already."

"The seagulls," Rachel said at once. "We just want them to get around, right? Nobody's going to care about a bunch of gulls flying around the city together."

This might sound a little silly, but I wasn't keen on acquiring the seagull. I did it, but having two birds that couldn't defend themselves against something like the hawk annoyed me. I didn't want to risk wasting all my morphing ability on second-tier birds.

That didn't stop me from morphing back to bird form – the seagull was an upgrade from cockatiel, at least – as soon as I acquired it.

"I'm not standing around with you guys in my underwear," I said. They accepted that. I morphed gull. The trash can in Cassie's barn suddenly morphed into an all-you-can-eat buffet. I focused on the mission talk. Mostly.

"What next," Cassie asked, putting the last of the birds back into its cage. "An escape morph?

"Battle morphs," Rachel said immediately. "We need a way to hit the Yeerks hard," She pulled out some sort of book from her bag. "I went to The Gardens and brought back this."

She paused for a second. "I call shotgun on the Grizzly."

Marco snorted. "Take it easy, Xena."

Rachel gave him a look.

"I can ask my mom to take us next weekend?" Cassie ventured, looking thoughtful. "Let us go with her in the back? It'll be like old ti-"

"No." Jake and Marco at the same time.

"Your mom's not gonna let us-" Marco jerked his thumb at Rachel, "pet grizzly bears."

"I'd rather not have anyone involved that could maybe be traced to us, if we can help it," Jake added. Cassie's eyes widened.

((So what, we sneak in?)) I asked, turning away from the scrap of hamburger wrapper on Cassie's dad's workbench and back to Jake.

He nodded. "Yeh. Friday night. Come up with a cover that we're all staying late at someone else's and come up with a way to get into the back." He turned to Cassie. "Any other ideas?"

She shrugged. "I'll think about it. We can fly onto the grounds no problem, but the sleeping areas aren't all open. Squirrels? Cockroaches? I need to think about it."

"I don't want to become a cockroach," Marco interrupted, looking very pale.

"I think you'd be perfect for it," Rachel quipped.

I stayed silent. I contemplated the bag of birdseed in the corner.

"We've got a few days to plan that out." Jake said, playing peacemaker once more. He turned to Elfangor, "would you mind flying with Tobias and scouting out the zoo from above?" he asked. "You both have actually flown before. Scope the place out."

((No problem.)) I replied. Sure, my flying experience was only a few hours, but it was fantastic. I wasn't complaining about it. We'd fly over The Gardens food court. Maybe we could hit up an Arby's. Oh, also, I think Jake was making me our unofficial Andalite ambassador.

"Cassie, can you figure out whatever morphs we'll need to get inside?"

"And a list of what we need and where to find it," Marco added. He turned to Rachel. "We need to get in and get out, not going from one end of the zoo and back again to pick up three different morphs. If we're starting with Grizzly, we should already know what other animals we're acquiring from the North America exhibit before we move on."

Rachel tapped her book with one finger and gave Marco a smug look. "Already figured it out," she breezed. "Cass and I will have the tour of a lifetime ready for you on Friday night."

Jake nodded. "Great. And then me, Marco, and Rachel on primary Chapman duty. See if we can confirm if he's a Controller and if he reveals where the Yeerk pool is… that probably requires a few small morphs as well…"

He turned to Elfangor again, "can dogs smell Yeerks?"

It was an odd question.

((I do not know. I have never been a dog. But there are many species in the galaxy with a superlative sense of smell and to my knowledge none have ever been capable of determining if someone is or isn't a Controller. Why do you ask?))

Jake shrugged. "I don't know. Just a thought I had on the beach yesterday. It's nothing."

We talked a little more, and then they broke up. Jake was taking Rachel and Marco back home and Cassie had work to do in the barn. Jake offered to give me a ride, but I turned him down. I wasn't in a hurry to get home.

((I'm gonna hang with Elfangor,)) I said. ((I've learnt a lot about the Yeerks today – I'll catch you guys up on it later.)) I didn't add that maybe I'd fly over a McDonald's dumpster or two on my way back.

Jake nodded, Marco and Rachel said good-bye to me, and Cassie gave us an apologetic explanation that she'd love to stay and chat but between schoolwork and chores she really needed to get going.

((It's fine, Cassie. And sorry for scaring all of you earlier. I mean it.))

She waved it away, looking up at us perched on the beams. "Don't worry about it," she said. "We just freaked out, everyone was glad you're ok more than they are mad at you."

((That's nice.))

"Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow," Cassie said after a bit. "I guess we can't hang out or anything though, "security"." She made little quotation marks with her fingers. "But I'll see you."

She left, and Elfangor and I flew out.

((There is one more issue,)) Elfangor said as we flew over the horse paddock. ((But it is one without an answer at this moment. I will bring it up to your Prince when I can offer a possible solution. There is no sense adding more of a load when there is no plan yet available.))

((My Prince?))

((An Andalite military rank. It is clear that you have all accepted Jake as your Prince.))

I didn't say anything to that. Jake was the obvious choice to hash out a final consensus but I wouldn't go so far as to call him my 'Prince'.

((Come, let me show you.)) Elfangor said, oblivious to my thoughts.

We flew a mile or so out from Cassie's farm, past a gully and an area of really dense undergrowth, then up a sharp if small hill and down into the ravine on the other side.

((I scouted the area this morning in this hawk body,)) Elfangor explained. ((I believe this place should be suitable for a scoop without any human interruption.))

We flew down, and I morphed Andalite. We kept going a little further and then I saw a lean-to, at this stage not much more than a framework of thick sticks and the tarp that Cassie had given him from the barn the day before.

((I will camouflage it tomorrow and round out a more functional Scoop.)) He half promised himself and half told me. He reached down to an empty spot and with a _thbzzz_ I could suddenly see his saddle bag thing once more. The hologram generator or whatever.

He reached in and pulled out another gadget.

((How many cool gadgets to you have?)) I asked, imagining some sort of alien Yeerk-destroying death ray or something.

Elfangor looked uncomfortable. ((Very little. Most was destroyed with my ship. Most of what I have are emergency supplies… and personal effects.)) He paused. ((I have a picture of.. of my family. Would you like to see it?))

((Sure, I guess.))

He went into the bag and pulled out… what could have been a regular photograph. I mean it showed four Andalites but it wasn't a hologram or three-dimensional or anything, it was a photograph. Of family.

((My mother and father. And my younger brother, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. My brother was on the Dome Ship when it detached for battle. He was on board the dome when it crashed into your ocean, approximately four hundred and sixteen miles, two-hundred and thirty of your degrees from my initial crash.))

I was uncomfortable. My Andalite body shuffled its back hooves.

((I'm sorry.))

((I am as well. But I will find a way.)) He was staring at the thing in his hand that looked like a cross between a phone and a coffee thermos. ((As long as my brother continues to maintain the distress signal, I will find a way to rescue him.))

Wait, what?


	6. The Discovery: Cassie I

**Arc 1: The Discovery**

 **Chapter 5**

 **Cassie**

* * *

My name is Cassie. Almost a week ago, the lives of me and four of my friends changed forever when an alien crashed into our town and gave us the power to turn into animals. We're supposed to use this power to fight back against a race of evil space slugs who want to conquer the Earth, killing most of the planet and reducing the rest of us to slaves inside our own bodies.

Ok, we haven't actually fought back _yet_ , but tonight we start for real. Rachel – my best friend – and I had spent the last couple of days coming up with a plan for sneaking into The Gardens, acquiring the morphs we would need to take the fight to the Yeerks. I was scared, but I was also kind of… inspired? It was spiritual in a way; we were going to use the strength of the lion, the eyes of the eagle, the intelligence of the whale; all the species of our planet working together to repel the invader.

Marco laughed when I explained it like that, but Jake gave me a small smile. Rachel just told us to hurry up – she was _really_ excited at the prospect of acquiring a Grizzly Bear.

((Ok, we're airborne. We'll see you in forty-five.)) That was Tobias, flying with Elfangor our resident alien as seagulls above the barn.

"Mom! Dad! Rachel's here – I'll see you later," I called out, grabbing my bag and heading for the door.

"Have fun," my mom called out. Then I was out the door and into the back seat of Jake's car, next to Rachel.

"All good?" she asked as I buckled up. I nodded.

"Yeah – I'm spending the night at your place. You?"

"Same."

"And we've got big news," Marco said, turning around to face us. "We're ninety-nine percent sure that Chapman's a Controller."

"For sure now? What happened?"

Jake, Marco, and Rachel had been trailing our vice-principal for the last couple of days, although with all of us being in school and having to maintain normal lives, they hadn't found much, from what Rachel had told me Wednesday night.

Marco looked proud of himself. "At lunch today we snuck into Mrs. Peterson's classroom – Jake acquired Eddie."

Mrs. Peterson is the freshman biology teacher. Eddie is the class lizard – a green anole to be exact.

"Best game of rock-paper-scissors I've ever won," Marco said with a grin.

Jake just grunted.

"What did you do," I asked, scooting forward. Rachel started snickering.

"My cousin ate a spider," she supplied. Marco howled.

"It's not funny," Jake cut in.

"It's okay," I said, patting his shoulder. "There are several cultures where spiders are a delicacy."

"Yeah, but how many of them are eating spiders the size of your head? Or where it's still alive and scrambling in your belly."

I made a face – thankfully Jake didn't see it. "Oh."

He shuddered. "I hope both of you end up morphing vultures at some point," he directed at Marco and Rachel who were both choking themselves with laughter.

"Marco's already halfway there," Rachel remarked. "I'm more of a bald eagle myself. Glamorous. Powerful."

"Anyway-" Jake cut in, eyes catching me through the rear-view mirror. "I snuck into Chapman's office, right after school. He made a _lot_ of phone calls in the hour, all through the school line. Nothing on his cell. I only heard one name, Braun, but after he left and locked up I demorphed and checked his phone. So, we have a list of all the numbers he called.

"How do you get that out?" I asked. We had all figured out how to morph skintight clothes, but we could morph with paper? This would be a big improvement.

"I morphed Marco." Jake finished.

"My plan," Marco added. "It was genius. I was already morphed as Jake – I was in Mr. Tidwell's classroom, doing 'homework' and waiting for 'Marco' to show up. And so, Jake morphed as me thought-spoke the numbers while I was 'Jake' and I just wrote them down from halfway across the building.

"It was a pretty good plan," Rachel conceded. I nodded. As cool as being able to morph with stuff like paper or coins or baggier clothing would have been, it was a really impressive use of the 'thought-speak as a morphed human' loophole we had discovered. Even if I didn't approve of how cavalier the rest of the group were about morphing people, at least it was only each other.

"Anyway, then Jake morphed back to lizard, got out, and we went to the library. The public library, not the school one, obviously."

Marco was really skittish about security, and if our school really was a base of operations for the Yeerks, the more we avoided it the better.

"Long story short, of the eleven numbers I got, five of them were doctors – three of them neuro surgeons," all at the same hospital downtown.

"The Yeerks are planning on infesting patients. Maybe they already are." I stated the obvious conclusion.

Marco nodded, looking very grim. "That's our guess."

"The only problem is we don't _know_ Chapman is a Controller," Rachel added, she sounded annoyed. "Oh, I know we know, but we don't _know_. And we've not seen him go off to whatever this Yeerk Pool is even once."

Marco shrugged. "We'll find it. It could be at the hospital. Lots of people coming in and out. Lots of space."

I nodded. That made sense.

"We're going over to the Chapmans tomorrow," Jake finished. "Rachel and I are just gonna go over and see if Melissa wants to hang out. Maybe we can see something from inside the house, or, find out what his weekend plans are."

"Anything I can do to help?"

Jakes eyes flashed to me once more. He gave me a smile. "Yeah, that would be great, actually. Marco's got stuff with his dad and Tobias has a _thing_ he's helping Elfangor with," Jake sounded like he didn't know what the _thing_ was. "If you could be our eyes in the sky, that would be great."

I smiled, sitting back. "Cas-seagull, at your service."

Rachel poked me and groaned. "Never do that again."

"Yeah, that's my job," Marco sassed back.

It didn't take us much longer to reach the mall. Which was in the exact opposite direction as The Gardens. Jake parked. Four teenagers walked out.

We bought tickets to some action movie that Jake and Marco had already seen.

Ten minutes later, four seagulls took off for the Gardens.

((That guy has pizza!)) Jake cried out.

((Half a bagel on the sidewalk, ten-o-clock!) Marco.

((Check out the trash behind KFC)) Rachel added, swooping low just in case we had missed it, which of course we hadn't.

((Hmmm, would that be cannibalism?)) Marco asked, sounding genuinely curious. ((Cassie, you're animal girl here, what's the call?))

((Sorry, what?)) I asked, trying to turn my attention away from a kid with a triple scoop Rocky Road. (Oh um… yeah, I could go for some chicken.))

Some morphs, like Jake's lizard, you really don't want to lose control. Other times, it can be kinda fun.

Despite all that, we made good time to The Gardens. The amusement park portion was still lit up, families with kids wandering around, teens hanging out in the food court… but the zoo was closed. Which was good, even though there was no cotton candy or hamburgers in the zoo, which meant my seagull brain had zero interest in heading that way when there was so much going on right below us.

((This animal has a remarkable sense of priorities.)) Elfangor. That snapped my attention. Right, we were here on a mission.

((Is the package ready?)) Jake asked, landing on the roof of the pretzel stand where – hopefully – two of the other gulls were Tobias and Elfangor. It's hard to really _place_ where thought-speak is coming from. We tested it, you can 'hear' up to about four-hundred feet away, and it gets fainter after that until disappearing around five-hundred, but there's no way to tell exactly where in the circle it's coming from. Not that we've found anyway.

((Yep.)) Tobias replied. ((The landing zone is clear. Ready?))

((Ready flight leader, over.)) Marco.

One of the gulls flapped its wings. ((Follow me.))

We took off after Tobias. He and Elfangor had planted the hologram machine near The Gardens earlier in the day, and then in hawk morph, while the rest of us were laying an alibi at the mall, Elfangor had flown it over the back of The Gardens perimeter, Tobias keeping watch. We now had an invisible little safe zone within to begin tonight's operation.

My gull eyes readjusted when we crossed over the hologram, and into approximately a half-dome six or so feet wide and high.

Elfangor demorphed. I'd already seen him go from hawk-to-Andalite, but it was just as freaky this time as the last. Of all of us, I'm the only one that can 'control' a morph, even if I'm still getting the hang of it. With everyone else, the morph is different every time. For instance, this time around, all the feathers split into Andalite fur first, and then then stalk eyes came out. Very weird.

Then as soon as he was finished, he began to shrink.

((This is the most disgusting thing I have ever witnessed.)) Marco commented, as all of us turned outward, like five seagull soldiers or something. I didn't disagree but none of us said anything. I think we were afraid to find out if seagulls could throw up. Because if anything could do the trick, seeing an Andalite turn into a cockroach would do it.

((It was bad enough touching a cockroach)) Marco went on. ((Cat? Dog? Those are fine. They're cute. They're small but not too small. Chicks love them. But roaches-))

((Shut up, Marco)) Rachel interrupted, definitely sounding queasy.

Cockroach Elfangor scuttled off, around the wall of the small out-building we had landed by.

((I am inside… the security measures protecting this place are practically nonexistent.))

I took offense at that in a weird vicarious way, even though it was precisely that lack of security that was going to help us tonight. ((Nobody can get into the service entrance without an encrypted cardpass, normally)) I explained. ((The cameras are there more to make sure nothing bad happens to the animals, it's not supposed to be Area 51.))

((I have overridden the cameras. They are now being spoofed. You may go.))

Rachel and I demorphed first. There's wasn't a lot of room in our privacy dome. So as soon as we became human, we shrank right back down. This time to squirrel.

That had been my mission. While the others were spying on our vice-principal or mapping out possible Yeerk locations form above, I had been in charge of coming up with a shopping list for tonight and acquiring the animals we would need in order to pull off our DNA heist. Over the past three days the others had come to the barn alone, and I'd managed to get wrangle three adult squirrels, two racoons, and a weasel. Rachel and I were both squirrels. This time, I tried for a kinda cartoon look, covering myself in fur and growing a long tail before completing the morph.

"Shroooow Erf," Rachel exclaimed around her enormous incisors.

Ten minutes later, ((This is the worst super hero squad ever)) Marco informed us. The squirrel brain was going frantic – Marco was the weasel. Thankfully we'd all had the foresight to practice these morphs, because my little squirrel brain couldn't stop screaming _run and hide!_ And I was putting a lot of faith in Marco not trying to eat me.

((I mean, don't get me wrong, those old timey burglar masks just fit Jake perfectly.)) Marco continued. ((And Rachel, you look fabulous. But somehow, I just can't imagine Earth being saved by, well… rodents.))

((Well, you're a perfect weasel.)) Rachel of course, she added with a tail swish.

((What would our name be if we were a superhero team?)) I asked.

Marco thought-laughed. ((Animal Morphers: Five idiotic teens with a death wish.))

((That's pretty good,)) Tobias admitted.

((It's a little long. Animal Morphers is five syllables.)) Jake added.

((Hmmm…)) Marco.

((Are you for real?)) Rachel asked, sounding equally amused and incredulous they were taking this so seriously.

((No, Jake's right,)) Marco added, completely serious. ((Avengers? Three syllables. Fantastic Four, four syllables. Justice League, three syllables. Animorphs?))

((I like it.)) Jake replied like he was judging fine art.

((If we're quite through,)) Rachel interrupted again.

((Yeah. Sorry - Everyone ready?)) Jake again, much more serious now.

((Ready as we'll ever be, fearless leader.)) Marco replied, sounding not serious at all.

((Let's do this.)) Rachel, of course.

((Are they always like this?)) Tobias thought-spoke to me in private.

((You get used to it.)) I thought back.

And then we were off, out of our hidey hole and across the zoo. Shadow! Noise in the distance. The urge to go to the safety that was _up_ was strong, but I kept racing along, in bursts towards the night quarters for the North America section of the zoo. There! The concrete wall that was the edge of the visitor's area. A large tree grew nearby, with a wooden bench underneath it. Up we went. Over the big branch that stretched over the wall. Down again. Another fence, slightly smaller and chain link, but with barbed wire over the top. No problem! Up and over.

((Okay, this is pretty cool,)) Marco cried out as his weasel form scrambled over the top.

((If we're an animal circus we're all acrobats,)) I added, exhilarated.

Down we jumped.

There was a third fence, this one with a screen to prevent wild birds from coming down here. It was such a challenge it took us maybe five seconds longer than the previous one.

((We're in,)) I said. ((Grizzly first.))

((Yes!)) Rachel, sounding like a kid at Christmas.

((Then um… wolves for everyone. Alligator for me and Tobias. Who am I missing?))

((Jake and I are picking up snakes.)) Marco reminded me, sounding unhappy at the prospect. Rachel didn't say anything to that. She hadn't been unhappy when she drew a long straw on that one.

We demorphed, after checking there was nobody around. I had a look at my mom's papers and knew the feeding schedules, but it didn't hurt to make sure anyway. We couldn't afford to be caught.

While the visitor part of The Gardens is designed to look like a jungle or a forest or the savannah, the working side is a lot more utilitarian. That's not to say that they don't care for the animals, of course they do – but it's not hiding the fact that these are concrete buildings.

I'm not going to describe turning into a cockroach for you. I kept my human eyes throughout most of the morph deliberately so I could close them. The others weren't so fortunate based on the amount of ((Agggggggggghhhhh!)) I had going on inside my head.

"Only have to do that another million times tonight," Marco said as we were human once more, but this time _inside_ the building that houses the mammals sleeping area – it's a long semi-underground tunnel that connects all the exhibits; some animals went to sleep inside, but all of them need a connection to the main hub from their public exhibit in case they need meds, or special food, or just a checkup.

"Here we go," I said, leading them to one of the doors. "Rachel, you're up."

Rachel looked a little pale, suddenly not quite so enthusiastic to actually be up and personal with one of the most dangerous animals on the continent, but she gave a short nod.

I opened the door. And Rachel stepped into a giant concrete cavern with a half-ton sleeping Grizzly Bear. Ok, so there was still a cage between them, but one swipe of its massive paw could behead a man, and Rachel had to touch it.

She went forward. Didn't even pause, just went right up, put her hand through the bars, and grabbed its foot.

The four of us flinched. Rachel didn't move. The bear… didn't move either.

"It's in the trance," I let out a sigh to the others.

"That's still the most batshit insane thing I've ever seen," Marco whispered, voice full of awe.

"Yeh," Tobias whispered back.

Thirty seconds later, Rachel made a dash for a door, closing it behind her.

She stood there for a few seconds, then made a show of brushing herself off. "Easy peasy." She said, her voice shaking only slightly. "Who's next?"

The rest of the area went easily enough; for all of Marco's worries, the snakes in the snake house are devenomized; many of them were pets (often illegally) that people had abandoned. He and Jake acquired a Copperhead and a Mojave Rattlesnake respectively, without any trouble. A family of wolves were actually being treated in the clinic and were tranqued out, so the only issue there was who between Jake, Marco, and Tobias would get to acquire the male.

"Best game of rock-paper-scissors ever," Jake smirked as he won after four games.

"I miss something?" Tobias asked.

"Just Jake eating a spider while morphed as Eddie Lizzard," Marco replied while he touched the snout of one of the passed out female wolves.

"I ate a French fry earlier," Tobias said after a moment. "As a gull, I mean. Before I could stop myself. Just divebombed and took it right off the sidewalk."

"Boys," Rachel grumbled, giving me an exaggerated look of exasperation. We all chuckled and moved on.

"This is taking longer than expected," I panted as we came out of seagull morph, now on top of the Alligator pit after morphing just in time to avoid the evening walking patrol – not exactly the highest level of security but enough that we'd be in big trouble if seen. In addition, none of us had appreciated just how tiring morphing was. It wasn't a big deal when I turned into a horse but this evening, I had already been a seagull, then back to me, then right into squirrel, then back to me again, _another_ time as squirrel and now another time as gull. And we were just wrapping up North America.

"We'll come back later," Jake said. "We have birds, so we can come back for that. Maybe come back for the Amazon, too."

He looked at me, concern in his eye. "You ready for this?

I nodded. This was the first real dangerous thing we were doing, ignoring Rachel's poke-a-bear thing. Below us, in the pretend swamp? Two alligators.

The rest of us hung back. Rachel morphed into a bear.

"I'm never making fun of her ever again," Marco said.

((Heard that.)) Rachel replied, a Rachel that was covered in fur, had limbs like small trees and looked like she was ready to wrestle a minibus.

"Great."

((This is a fun morph!)) Rachel cried out as she then jumped into the alligator pit.

"Of course it is." That one was actually Tobias.

Naturally, alligators tend to react badly to a half ton of bear appearing out of nowhere, and both woke up startled, then lunged at Rachel.

((Hahaha! Ouch- ok whoa. Guys a little help here.)) We opened the hatch to the ladder and climbed down the side. Both alligators were focused entirely on Rachel. Tobias and I jumped. Jake and Marco were morphing wolf. Rachel was hitting both of the alligators with big meaty bear paws but still found the time to snarl at the new predators appearing to her side. ((Mine!)) she cried out, even as both alligators went into the morphing trance.

It didn't strike us till later how many times we almost died that night. There I was, tackling a hypnotized alligator in a pit with two wolves and a bear. We almost took care of the Yeerks' problem for them right there.

Rachel, Jake, and Marco demorphed, all looking exhausted. The climbed up the ladder.

"Ready?" Tobias asked me.

"No," I replied, but nodded anyway. He looked nervous. I couldn't blame him.

"On three," I said. "One… two… THREE!"

We bolted for the ladder. One-one thousand. Two-one thousand.

On seven, I heard a loud snort from behind. On nine, I was just behind Tobias and halfway up the ladder when it _clanged_ , the gator's tail giving the base of it a solid hit.

"Whoa!" Tobias exclaimed but he held on tight.

"Up, up, up!" Rachel.

We stopped, all of us lying down on the ground on the right side of the alligator pit.

"This is insane. Insane. Jake, this is insane," Marco went on.

Nobody disagreed.

"Are we done for the night?" Jake asked. He was phrasing it like he was asking the group, but I could tell he was directing it to me and Tobias.

I shook my head. "That should be the worst of it," I said. "Especially if we skip the Amazon. "Between Africa and Asia we have six more animals to get. I think we should go for it."

"Yeah," Rachel agreed. "Plus me, Cassie, and Tobias had to go big – you and Marco don't get to miss out on the fun."

The Africa section was much less exciting in life-or-death sort of way. Marco picked up one of The Gardens' newest celebrities – Big Jim, a silverback gorilla which had just arrived from a zoo across the country. He was in his own enclosure for now and hadn't even bothered to open his eyes when Marco grabbed his hand. Rachel had looked smug – "told you", she mouthed to me.

Jake acquired a Rhino and I picked up a Cape Buffalo. Everyone but Jake acquired Cheetahs. Tobias and Rachel both got Elephants.

I want to be clear: we were really, _really_ foolish. I've grown up around animals but the rehab center – aka "Cassie's barn" – gets nothing halfway as dangerous as a zoo and I guess my mom always made it sound kinda easy. But she's a professional and was always working with a team. Men with tranquilizer darts. Proper protocol. Not sneaking around and rushing here and there in the dead of night. Nothing _happened_ to use but a Cape Buffalo is one of the most dangerous animals on the planet. So are Rhinos. So are Gorillas. We are very lucky nothing happened, even when we were able to approach these animals through some of the safety layers in The Gardens.

We got a taste of what happens when luck runs out as we made our way over to the Asia section, to pick up one, last morph. The reason Jake didn't pick up Cheetah? He wanted Siberian Tiger, perhaps the single most apex predator on the planet. Not even humans can indisputably claim to have the upper hand against them.

It didn't help that we were tired, running on an adrenaline rush that our bodies kept respiking every time we morphed, and starting to feel very, very cocky.

"Everyone stay back," Jake said as I took us to the right door for the last time that night. "Marco, Rachel – if I need you, I'll let you know, but we'll save morphs if we can help it." They both nodded, looking relieved. Next time, we were definitely coming up a less morphing intensive plan.

Jake walked in, and the setup was fairly similar to what Rachel had experienced with the grizzly. Concrete bunker. Big cage. Sleeping dangerous predator.

The tiger though, was awake.

Siberian tigers are the largest cats in the world. I looked it up later, the male Siberian Tiger at The Gardens is just over seven hundred pounds, and over seven feet long, not including the tail. Almost all of that bulk is muscle, capable of propelling him to bursts of speed over fifty-miles an hour. Even today, there are villages throughout Asia that treat the tiger as something that brings terror in the night. Its roar alone exceeds one-hundred decibels, putting it around a jackhammer, only waaaay more terrifying.

And it was looking at Jake. In a 'oh look, dinner is serving itself,' sort of way, like it couldn't even be bothered to pretend to care.

"Oh this is bull-" Marco.

I pushed him, but I didn't disagree.

"Nice kitty," Jake said. "My cousin has a morph that's just like you, only a little bit smaller,"

Rachel actually let out a nervous giggle at that.

Jake stood there outside the tiger cage for about five minutes, the bars the only thing separating him from death in the flesh. The tiger closed his eyes, dismissing Jake.

Jake raised a hand, slowly. He was shaking.

"He's got balls," Tobias whispered.

Jake's hand reached the bars, and then he shoved it in, as fast as he could.

The tiger was faster.

"Oh, fuck me," Marco screamed, as Jake was pulled up against the cage, his wrist caught in the tiger's mouth. He was already morphing Big Jim.

"I'm okay," Jake cried out, sounding very pained. Tears were streaking down his eyes. "I… I think I've got him."

Sure enough, _somehow_ the tiger was in the trance. "I'm- I'm doing it. I'm acquiring him."

I jumped into the room, Marco still growing. Tobias threw up.

I went up to Jake and let out a scream myself. Half his hand was crushed. In trance, the tiger had loosened its grip, but Jake's arm was a mess. A long gash went up to his elbow. He was holding the tiger's tongue with his thumb and forefinger.

The tiger hadn't even been trying to eat him. This was the tiger playing. This was a love bite.

"Jake, I think you've got it, you need to let go. Jake – Jake look at me." I touched his cheek.

Jake opened his eyes.

"You did it. You need to let go. No – Marco, stay back."

Marco was trying to help, but he had never been a gorilla before. Like as not he'd end up crushing Jake by accident.

Jake gave a shaky nod.

"One, two… three!"

Jake let go. I pushed him back. He let out a scream as his ruined hand clanged against the bars, but he was out.

He fell down. I crouched down next to him. So did Rachel.

"Jake, cuz. You need to morph. Right now. Morph – not the tiger. Morph Homer." Homer was his most familiar morph, both as a morph and as an animal he knew. "Can you do that?"

That was Rachel, all of the evening's banter about eating spiders replaced with familial protection, her hand rubbing small circles on his back.

((Jake, buddy. Morph Homer. Remember Homer?)) Marco was standing by, now a giant silverback.

Jake took another breath, and then… his arm started sprouting fur.

"Your doing great," I said. "Keep going."

He got faster after that.

((I'm okay.)) He tested his leg, shifting weight onto one paw. ((Yeah. I'm okay.))

The tiger went back to sleep during all of this.

((We're done for tonight.)) Marco said, voice brooking no argument.

I agreed.

As Jake morphed back and took five minutes to rest – on the _other_ side of the door – I took a mop from the cleaning area (there's always cleaning supplies around the big carnivores because feeding them is always a bit of an ordeal, even when dinner isn't people). Tobias helped me out as we cleaned up his sick, apologizing. I told him it was fine – honestly it could have been any of us.

"There's no blood," I said as we put the stuff away, looking at the spot where minutes ago Jake had been bleeding like a horror movie victim.

Tobias shrugged. "Maybe it's how morphing works. The blood would have to go into Z-space or whatever? I don't know. I'll ask Elfangor about it later."

I nodded, too tired to pursue it.

We got out, and then flew back to the entrance. We let Elfangor know we were done, and he joined us, scuttling back out of the video feed room as a cockroach. Five minutes later him and Tobias flew over the fence. Tobias morphed human and then disappeared, protected by the hologram.

Our plan had one more flaw. Nothing like almost getting an arm bitten off by a tiger, but we were all supposedly spending the night at one another's houses. Marco and Jake. Me and Rachel. Which meant we, technically, had no place where we were actually supposed to be.

In the future, we'd have to think through the details a little more thoroughly. As it was, when we morphed back the final time to human behind the mall dumpsters, we were exhausted. Jake was definitely not in a position to drive. We crawled into Jake's car and just crashed right there in the mall parking lot, four sleeping teens each with four new species crawling around inside them.

We still hadn't even seen a Yeerk.


	7. The Discovery: Jake II

**Arc 1: The Discovery**

 **Chapter 6**

 **Jake**

* * *

I woke up in the mall parking lot to a cop rapping on my window. It took a second to realize why my neck was stiff – I was sleeping in the front seat of my car, Marco passed out next to me in the passenger seat, the girls in the back. Thankfully we'd at least put on our regular clothes – this would be a lot more difficult to explain in leotards and biker shorts, the only thing we'd found ourselves able to morph outside of underclothes.

The rapping on my window picked up; the cop didn't look happy. I rolled down the window.

"Good morning, officer." I played it cool.

"What's going on here," he demanded, straight to the point.

"Mmngh." Marco started to wake up. "Whoa what's going on," he inadvertently echoed the cop.

I ignored him.

"I'm sorry, sir – we caught a movie last night and were hanging out. I guess we were more tired than we thought."

It sounded lame even to my ears, and by the cop's expression he wasn't buying it. Granted, I'm sure he thought we'd been drinking more than we'd spent the night running around acquiring animal DNA to fight off an alien invasion, but it wasn't exactly a good look for us either way.

He stuck his head down, taking a glimpse inside the car. There was nothing to see of course, no empty beer cans or whatever, but I could picture what was going on inside his head.

Then he looked at me again.

"You look familiar. You have a brother?"

"Yeah uh, yes."

"Tom, right? Knew you looked familiar." He gave me a look resembling a smile. "He's a good kid – a real good influence for newcomers to The Sharing. Tell you what," he paused, giving the car a once-over again. Rachel and Cassie had woken up, all of us now watching the cop.

"I'm gonna let you kids off with a warning. If you were doing anything dumb, at least you didn't drive afterward."

"Thanks, yeah we won't do it again – we'll be sure to get home before we get too tired."

He nodded, looking out toward the mall. "That's a good idea. There's been a pickup of crime around here. Last week there was some arson in the works back there. None of you have heard any kids bragging about it?"

"No, nothing. Sorry." I said, very _very_ carefully not giving anything away.

The cop nodded. "Just be careful, all of you. And hey," he gave me a tough-guy grin. "Maybe I'll see you at The Sharing. Better place than the mall parking lot."

"Yeah, maybe."

We drove off. We hadn't even reached the first traffic light when Marco blew up.

"We are so screwed. They know there were kids around when Elfangor crashed. How do you think they know? Footprints? Cameras?"

"It'll be fine," Cassie interjected, putting a hand on Marco's shoulder. "Remember, it was your plan – we went back to the mall."

"Yeah," Rachel added. "Think about it, if the Yeerks really want to, they can probably tap the phone records. They'll expect kids to brag about seeing something. None of us made any calls except to our parents. We'll be fine."

Marco took a deep breath. "You realize we have to be a lot more careful. The whole point of coming to the mall was so nobody could tie us to The Gardens. Now we've got a cop _who is probably a Controller_ placing us specifically at the scene of the crime."

"At the _mall_. A week later. Thousands of people have been here since. We're fine," I said, sounding short and tired. "But… you're not wrong. We have to be more careful."

Marco nodded, leaning back in his seat. "We're still in over our heads."

I didn't say anything. I kept thinking about the cop – the Controller. He knew Tom. He had mentioned The Sharing. Mr. Chapman was also in The Sharing. He was also the other Controller we knew… I was tired, it was way too early to think about this.

It didn't help that I caught Rachel's gaze in the rearview mirror.

"So, Cassie's." I declared, gripping the wheel. "Grab some fresh clothes, get a message out to Elfangor. Still need to get Tobias a phone." I said, turning to the girls. "Marco, I'll text you if anything comes up."

"Sure, but please don't. I did the whole superhero thing last night, today is for my dad."

I nodded. Marco's mom died two years ago, and his dad totally fell apart afterward. I think the biggest reason that Marco is the least keen of any of us to fight this war is that if something happened to him, his dad… I don't know if he'd make it. Marco's had to be his dad's dad half the time. I wasn't going to get in between that.

Soon enough we all got home, and as much as I needed to get a few hours of sleep before our plan to head over to the Chapmans this afternoon, I had to mow the lawn instead. Can't complain, but it was weird to think not even twelve hours earlier I'd almost had my arm torn off by a tiger and here I was mowing the lawn.

"Hey, Squirt." My brother came out, inspecting my work with the look of someone really pleased it's not him doing it. "Looks good. Good to see the lawn will survive my absence."

"Yeah, it was real touch and go for a minute," I joked back, turning the mower off. "You found a place for sure, then?"

Tom was graduating – or already had graduated and had to play out the last few weeks of Senioritis for formality's sake. Tom had been a star on the varsity team, and we all thought he'd be going to some big school on a scholarship, but instead he'd surprised everyone and stayed local. He said he'd gotten a great offer and it was time to think beyond basketball. He was looking at renting a place downtown with two friends of his and his girlfriend, but so far, they hadn't found anything they liked.

"Yeah, there's an apartment building near the complex that cut me a deal. I've been offered a room at discount in exchange for being onsite assistance, so long as I start over the summer. How great is that?"

I shrugged. "Guess I can have your room then."

Tom laughed. "Whatever, Squirt. Catch you later."

I nodded, going back to the lawn. Thinking about Cassie, or the tiger that now lived inside me, or today's mission. Anything really.

My aunt dropped Rachel off a little after lunch. She did the whole, 'thought I'd surprise you' with my mom and dad, and then casually mentioned she was going to see Melissa and if I wanted to come.

"I dunno I got a new vid-"

The magic words to get my mom to insist I go outside with my cousin. Rachel flashed me a smirk.

"So how are we doing this?" I asked as we walked the block to the Chapmans' house.

Rachel shrugged. "We just go up and knock, ask if Melissa wants to hang?" She laughed. "How is this hard? We used to do this all the time. We did it _months_ ago. Back when-" she cut herself off, but we were thinking the same thing. Back when Melissa didn't shut herself off after her parents turned into totally different people.

"There's something else," Rachel said, as the Chapman house came into view. "I think you should acquire Mr. Chapman."

" _What?_ "

"It makes sense," she said, sounding defiant. "If he is a, you know, then he's got some clout. He's does important stuff for the…" Rachel looked away.

"For the Sharing," I finished. Rachel nodded.

"We'll talk later," I said. "And I'll do it. Could come in handy."

"Thanks," she said. "I'd do it myself but… I'd prefer not to, if I don't have to," she gestured vaguely to herself.

That part at least turned out to be really easy. Mr. Chapman answered the door. "Oh… hello. Rachel, Jake."

"Good morning," I put out my hand. Unthinkingly, Mr. Chapman shook it.

For a second, I felt a spark of dread. Would Mr. Chapman recognize the telltale trance of being acquired?

But nope, he just shook his head as if to clear it. "Sorry, yes – I expect you're here to see Melissa?"

"If she's available," Rachel said with a smile.

"You know the way," he stepped back, allowing us into his home.

The most dangerous thing about Yeerks is that they act just like you'd expect a regular person to act. Except, apparently, when the Chapmans had no guests to hide their identities from.

Rachel and Melissa did the whole 'oh my gosh I haven't seen you in forever," thing. I went to the bathroom, locked the door, and morphed into Marco.

((You there, Cassie?))

((Yep, got here five minutes ago. Where are you?))

((Bathroom. Marco morph. Rachel and Melissa are in the living room with the Chapmans.))

I could hear the sigh in Cassie's voice. ((We really shouldn't get too comfortable morphing humans, even each other.))

I decided not to let her in on the whole acquiring Mr. Chapman thing quite yet.

((I'll talk to you later. Keep me posted if anything changes… and Cassie? Thanks.))

We hung out for an hour, and literally nothing happened. Mrs. Chapman brought us snacks at one point. Melissa went out to help her. It must be driving her mad, to have these rare moments of her parents acting like they once had, back when they were her parents. But only when it was a show. A show she nevertheless couldn't help but participate in whenever she had the chance.

What would you do, if you knew something was wrong with your parents and the opportunity came to have one hour to pretend everything was fine?

((Mr. Chapman has left the house. He's getting in the car.))

I made a show of picking up my phone.

"Rach, Melissa – I'm really sorry but Marco's got some stuff I gotta help with."

"Aww Jakey, too much girl talk?" Rachel replied, giving me a fake pout. Melissa gave a tiny giggle.

"Do you need a ride later?" I asked my cousin instead, going over our rehearsed plan.

Rachel looked at Melissa. "I doubt it. I'll call you if I do though. Thanks."

I said goodbye to Mrs. Chapman and walked out.

((You don't really appreciate how long it takes humans to get everywhere. Traffic. Lights. Roads that don't go from A to B. Ugh.)) Cassie started as soon as I was clear of the Chapmans.

I started walking back to my house. It would have been great to have Elfangor's little hologram hideout things scattered all around town.

((Traffic's picking up, you're not gonna have time to get home… we really need to work on our tailing people. Um… oh! Three houses down from you. No, other way. Nobody's home. There's a shed.))

My clothes – and another problem, my phone, my wallet, literally all my identification – tucked under a bush, I flew to the sky.

((Cassie can you hear me.))

((Just.)) Her thought-speak was very faint. ((We're just passing the park, heading toward school.))

It didn't take long to catch up. As Cassie had said earlier, cars are limited by the route of the road, and have to stop for traffic and lights. The seagull had no such restrictions. It was the coolest morph I'd done so far. Sure, it was constantly trying to convince me to eat garbage, but that was infinitely better than being a cockroach or a lizard. Racoon was okay.

We flew to the school in silence. I guess I could say it was the focus of the mission, but honestly, I wasn't sure what to say, and so decided to say nothing. A voice that sounded suspiciously like Marco kept telling me to make a joke about the Mile-High Club. I didn't.

((He's with someone, look!)) Cassie exclaimed, pulling me out of my thoughts. ((It's… Mr. Tidwell. And Mr. Johnson. And Mrs. What's-her-name.))

((Um. Crawford. I had her last year.))

((Oh. Yeah, that's right. You don't think they're all Controllers?))

((We're about to find out)) I said grimly, swooping along the side of the main building. ((Really strange faculty meeting otherwise.))

We landed on the roof as Mr. Chapman walked over to the three waiting teachers. He checked his watch.

((What's the plan, do we go in as cockroaches?))

I shuddered. But thankfully, it was a no go.

((No. I go in as lizard. I can see and hear as a lizard. Can we make out language as cockroaches?))

((I don't know… we should find out.)) Cassie said.

((Add it to the list. Along with starting to keep track of confirmed Controllers.))

I morphed Lizard. I didn't say anything to anyone, but I'd had nightmares last week after the whole swallowing the spider thing. Dreams of human Jake being held down by giant lizards and armies of spiders forcing themselves down my throat.

But I did it anyway. I shrank. My skin turned green and blew up like I was made up of pebbles, and started to sag. Then I shrank, until I looked like some sort of miniature radioactive leper. Then the lizard brain kicked in. Sunlight! Open space! Bird!

((Cassie, I am really, really counting on you to control that morph,)) I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. ((Are they going in yet?))

((Yeah. Mr. Pierce just showed up. They're all heading to the main door.))

((Ok. I need you to… I need you to pick me up and see if you can't land me nearby. I need to follow them. And please don't kill me.))

I clamped down on the lizard brain. Ignored the giant shadow that suddenly loomed over me. Fought not to struggle as Cassie the seagull picked me up, not to let myself fall or lash out and cause her to lose her own control over the bird's instincts.

Marco probably would have yelled out 'Bonzai!' Cassie just dropped me a foot above the ground, just around the corner where the five teachers-probably-Controllers were just now arriving at the door.

I'm going to say that Cassie was laying a distraction so I could sneak into the door Mrs. Crawford was holding open without being noticed and confirming that we absolutely were not morphed Andalite guerillas or whatever because she carried on, landing right there among the teachers, and ate a giant crumb of oatmeal cream pie. Definitely a planned and deliberate act of military misdirection. Yep.

Thankfully, the school was darker than usual, but the lizard brain pretty much had two modes, chill or scatter. We weren't gorging on spider in some warm dark closed space, so scatter was winning. I clamped down, following the five teachers along the corridor. They were talking, but I couldn't really hear them. I mean I _could_ but… the lizard brain wasn't interested in taking it in, if that makes sense. And human Jake was way to focused on not getting caught.

The first time I entered the faculty lounge was as a tiny reptile checking out my teachers for aliens. As important as that was, it was a bit of a letdown. An old couch and a couple of office chairs. A fridge. A kitchen cabinet with microwave and a coffee maker on it.

Chapman went up to the microwave. Wow, great plan Jake I got to watch my teachers enjoy some hot pockets on the weekend. Beep boop beep beep.

And then the there was a loud rumbling. I know, I know it sounds really cheesy. Press a secret button and a door appears after a miniature quake. Very 1970s. But keep in mind I was a lizard. My whole _being_ was primed for any tiny change in the ground around me. I doubt anyone outside the faculty lounge would have even noticed.

The entire cabinet system swung open like it was on a hinge – which it probably was. Behind was an opening, the edge of a stainless-steel door hanging up from where it had presumably been lifted before the whole swinging cabinet thing.

My teachers went in.

I could have left. Maybe I should have. I had confirmation now; Chapman was a Controller, as were four other teachers at my school. But in the moment, I made a choice. I followed.

It looked like an old timey elevator. They crowded in, and down we went.

((They're Controllers.)) I thought up to Cassie. ((We're going down in a secret elevator under the school. I'll get up as soon as I can.))

((You're what Jake? Are you okay? Be careful.))

((I will.))

((Where was it? In Chapman's office, one of the classr-))

Halfway down Cassie's voice faded out. I was alone in hell now, and panic welled inside me for a moment. The lizard brain was actually an anchor for me; yeah it was afraid, but afraid in the sense that there were five giant sets of shoes in near proximity. It didn't understand alien invasions or heading down to a literal hell. It kept me in check, which let me hang on long enough to keep _it_ in check, if that makes sense. The door opened at last. And Hell was a lot more… sterile.

I don't know what I'd expected. Some giant underground lake maybe, lined with torture devices and cages of Controllers. Some vast underground headquarters, with alien troops marching around. Some alien prison camp, something that would set it apart, that would prove that this was an invasion of earth by evil forces that we couldn't begin to understand.

But there wasn't anything like that, it was just a sterile looking room, with a metal bench along one wall and this large vat taking up maybe a third of the space. The vat was glass or plastic or something – transparent, whatever it was, and mostly full of a thick liquid. It _thrummed,_ and it shone with a sickly yellow light.

Coming off the vat was a trough, about three feet off the ground, with ten chutes feeding the trough from the vat. There were ten padded cots next to each segment of the trough, and _these_ did resemble some sort of medieval torture device.

On the other side of the room, a small computer panel. I mean it was out of place being beneath my school, but it looked pretty normal for what it was, certainly compared to the vat.

I scampered behind the bench. Now I could focus my human brain for something beyond tailing my vice-principal.

Chapman looked at his watch.

"Fifteen minutes for each of you." Four nods.

Chapman took off his tie and shoes then rolled up his cuffs and lay back on one of the cots. Mr. Pierce did the same on the next bench over, though none of the others did. I discovered why in a moment. The other three strapped the two of them into the cots, their hands and feet locked into plastic pockets made to envelope them. A weird looking half-face gas mask, just covering the nose and mouth, were put on top of their faces.

A pair of legs walked over to the computer panel side of the room and must have done something, because the two cots started to move, making a slight electric whirr as they did. The elevated, and I realized they were placing the two Controllers so that the side of their heads were below the lip of the troughs. Troughs that were now being filled with the liquid form the vat.

Then I saw the Yeerks. The half-crawled, half-oozed out of their ears, as soon as the liquid – _the Yeerk Pool_ – quit flowing into the troughs. I realized I was basically watching Yeerks take a bath.

Mr. Pierce let out a yell and thrashed for a minute uselessly, but then fell into a stupor. The remaining Controllers didn't say a word. They just stood over him until he stopped struggling, fiddling with his mask. Then they sat down on the bench.

I felt hatred then. I mean obviously we had an idea of what we were up against, but it hadn't really sunk in. But here were two of my teachers, and it wasn't enough that they were slaves in their own heads. What had Chapman said – fifteen minutes. But the Yeerks denied them those fifteen minutes to scream or curse or cry. To speak to one another. No, the Yeerks saw humanity as less than an enemy. Just a host. A body. A thing. Mr. Pierce was himself for a quarter hour for the first time in three days and he couldn't even make a fist. Couldn't speak. Couldn't do more than move his neck a few degrees this way and that while his colleagues were forced to watch, until whatever drug they were pumping into him took even that away from him.

I wanted the Yeerks dead. Exterminated. Wiped out not just from Earth but the next million worlds. I didn't know what the Yeerk home world looked like, but I wanted it glowing with nuclear fire in retaliation for what they wanted – what they were actually doing – to the human race. To the people of my town. People I'd known all my life.

The Yeerk inside Chapman was apparently a big wig of some sort, because it wasn't a mere fifteen minutes for the likes of him. For Mr. Pierce it was, and then he was replaced with another Controller, then another, then the last. The whole time, Chapman's Yeerk had a grand old time in its own little trough. I guess it made sense – maybe a Yeerk _could_ survive on fifteen minutes of Kandrona every three days, but that must be like starvation rations for a human. It made sense that important Yeerks would have the luxury of longer feedings.

One of them complained about it actually.

"I thought that after we blew up that damn ship, things would pick up," a voice rumbled above me.

"It could be worse, Deranne four-six-four…" I lost a bit of what came next until I realized that that must be the Yeerk's name, "… it will get much worse. Especially if the rumors are true."

"I don't believe them. Nothing has happened."

"Visser Three believes it. That Beast Elfangor survived the crash. Possibly others."

There was silence, and then a few minutes of swapping out the last of the hungry Yeerks for one that had just fed.

"Visser Three believes it to be true. They say he has a history with the Beast. And so you had better believe it too."

I was listening to Yeerks gossip. Feet scuffled.

"I guess this isn't so bad. With my first host, I had to feed all the way across town. Disgusting. And a great waste of time."

A laugh. It was creepy, knowing an alien was capable of mimicking a human chuckle of sympathy.

"Neptune Burger?"

"Yes."

More shuffling above me. "Iniss two-two-six is reentering the Chapman host, Eldris one-nine-naught, please drain the vat and let's get this over with; my host's husband is suspicious enough, he will need to be taken soon.

As sound like a large drain being flushed. Mr. Chapman – or I guess, Iniss two-two-six – stood up a moment later.

"The human schedule of a five-day subset within seven is very frustrating," the Yeerk inside Chapman's head grumbled. "It will be the first thing to go."

Then they left that hell. I hauled lizard ass. I'd been in morph for a little more for an hour, and no way I was getting stuck as a lizard in this alien hell. The lights went out leaving the whole room being bathed in just that dim eerie yellow light – the portable Kandrona. I was in the elevator in a shot.

About halfway up, I heard Cassie's voice return. ((-hour twenty.))

((I'm on my way up)) I cried out, the words desperate to get out. ((I'm almost out.))

Thought-speak doesn't really carry tone, but it does carry emotion, if that makes sense.

((Jake… are you ok?))

I wasn't. Not really.

((Jake? Jake?))

((We're back in the faculty lounge,)) I said in way of an answer.

Thankfully they didn't stick around. Any longer and I was seriously tempted to ask Cassie to make a distraction – morph Buffalo and break a few windows, or maybe sneak in as a roach and pull the fire alarm. Coming back to the surface opened something inside me.

But nope, they just closed everything back up, Chapman… Iniss… put a code into the microwave which again, I should have caught but didn't, and they headed out. They turned toward the main entrance.

((Yeerks heading out,)) I called up to Cassie.

Ten minutes later, I was airborne, Cassie and I flying back towards my place.

((Jake, you're scaring me,)) Cassie said as we were halfway back without a word between us.

((Sorry.))

Another minute of silence.

((We're… we're not even cattle to them. They have this machine, and they tied Chapman and the others up to it, one at a time. And when the Yeerk was out of his head he wasn't even free to get angry about what they'd done to him. He was strapped down and drugged. That's what we're facing, Cassie. A future where the human race doesn't even get fifteen minutes of freedom every three days.))

((But we know where it is now!)) Cassie replied, trying to cheer me up. ((We can destroy the Yeerk pool. I know… I know that won't end the invasion but that will be a big help, right?))

I didn't say anything.

((Maybe. But… that wasn't the Yeerk Pool. Not like Elfangor described it. This one had space for ten people at once, but they were only using two. Quarter hour each, that's what, forty an hour? Four hundred a day? Cassie… I think this is just the Yeerk Pool _for our school_.))

((Oh.)) Her thought-speak sounded small.

((Yeh.))

I was silent for a little longer, then banked left, catching a thermal – a pillar of warm air that birds can use to easily gain elevation – over a McDonald's parking lot.

((C'mon, we gotta go see Marco.))

((Why?))

((Because Rachel is busy with Melissa and then has her shift at the mall. And I want to have Marco pick this apart before we talk to Elfangor tomorrow.))

Not for the first time, I wasn't sure if I could trust the Andalite.

It didn't take us long to reach Marco's neighborhood.

((Marco, I know it's your day with your dad and I'm sorry, but if you can hear us, let me know. We need to talk.))

Five minutes later, Marco stepped outside, looking annoyed.

((We're above you. Do you have a few minutes?))

Marco didn't say anything, but he walked over to their detached garage and opened the door. Then with a sarcastic 'please come in' hand motion, he stepped in. Two seagulls followed a minute later.

"What's going on," Marco hissed, a little angry but mostly just keeping his voice down. "And why are we bringing this stuff to my dad's house?"

"I found it," I said. "I followed Chapman, he went to the school, and we found it but, it's not what we thought… what Elfangor told us."

I went through it with Cassie and Marco. About where the pool was, and how it was more a Kandrona dispensary than an actual pool. How the Yeerks had their own little baths and how… tiny, it was, all in all. That the Yeerks had weird names. That Visser 3 was here, whoever he was, and suspected Elfangor had survived the crash. That the Yeerks ate at Neptune Burgers.

"I don't think they ate," Marco interrupted. "I think they literally fed. You're right – if there really are a maximum of ten Yeerks feeding at our school at a time, then that thing is designed to pretty much turn our school into a self-contained Yeerk outpost. So, they must have other pools around town."

"And we think one of them is the big one?" I probed.

Marco just shrugged. Cassie responded. "Why would they need to? They could have a bunch of isolated machines all around town. All over the world."

"Damn."

I agreed with Marco's assessment. "There must be a reason for it though right? I mean, it can't be easy building dozens or hundreds of secret bases. It's a lot of work for just a few Yeerks. I mean okay if it was to infest the President or NASA or whatever maybe but this?"

I had a nasty thought.

"There's probably one at the hospital too, if Chapman was interested in all those doctors."

Marco looked sick. "This is way too much man. We need to get out of here. What if we go to school Monday and bam! They infest the whole school? _They could do it_ , right? They've got enough Yeerk Pool thing or whatever they could do it. And even if we destroy it, so what? They just move to another pool for a while. And how do we destroy it?"

"I don't know. But we have to."

" _We have to?!_ Bro this is too much. I was willing to help but c'mon, we can't get ourselves killed over a Yeerk Pool _outlet store_. What do you think happens to my dad if something happens to me? If I get killed. Or even worse, I get captured. They infest him to torture me!"

"Marco, this is for the whole planet. We have to s-" I grabbed Cassie's arm, trying to cut her off. It was too late though, Marco whirled onto her.

"No, we don't have to do _anything_. The Andalites are coming, right? That's what Elfangor said. So, what we have to do is get out of town and keep ourselves and our families safe until they do. And if they don't show up, we're done for anyway and dying to destroy our high school's secret Yeerk base isn't going to change anything."

He gestured back to his house. "You, Jake, Rachel – you've all got nice families. Tobias, you see how much he's ready to fight this war? That's cause he's got no life here. Nothing. So for him it's an easy choice. But me? My mom's dead and some days my dad's hanging on by a thread. I got too much to give it up but not enough that if something happens to me…" Marco balled his fists and swallowed a lump in his throat.

"Marco…"

"I'm sorry man. I don't mean to go off on you like this, but I thought the Yeerks were just starting off. We trash a few things kill a few aliens and we become heroes. But this is too much. We're teenagers with Captain Planet powers and an escaped Andalite POW. Jake, Jake you listening?"

I nodded, but my mind was working elsewhere.

"Marco, I get it. You know me, you know I get you one this." Marco nodded slowly. I'd been there when his mom died. Shared his grief. Helped out however I could. Seen his dad descend from one of the top physics engineers in this part of the state into deep depression, losing his job, losing his house… I _got_ Marco.

"If you can't do this, I don't blame you. I'll stick by you if the others say anything. But help me work this out. Not the action, but the thinking. I think I get it. But I need you to let me know if I'm full of shit."

"Ok… Yeah, I can do that. Been doing it for years."

I laughed at that. Full of nerves, but it was a real laugh.

"It's like sorties. The Yeerks are doing sorties."

Cassie and Marco both looked at me like I'd grown a second head. Which hey, if ever we went to another planet maybe I'd pick up the talent.

"Not following you."

I shook my head, gathering my thoughts. "When you launch airplanes off an aircraft carrier, you want to send them in smaller groups," I explained. I'm a bit of a nerd for the navy, I'll admit it.

"Smaller sorties mean that attacks are ready quicker. And when they return, it's less pressure on the landing crew and maintenance people. Big sorties require a lot more people under a lot more pressure in the same time frame. They also mean that the enemy spends a lot more time not taking fire. If the enemy can't stop you, ideally you want an assembly line of small sorties running round the clock."

Marco thought on that for a second, then snapped his fingers. "You're right. Or kinda right. It makes sense though. If the Yeerks had one pool in some central location, Chapman… Iniss would have to go there every three days. How much time would that waste? On top of the ten hours a day he already has to pretend to be human. But I bet during the week, the Yeerk can just slip away right after school, or maybe even during lunch. Especially as more and more teachers become Controllers."

Cassie and I nodded. "So they're spreading out," she picked up from Marco's train of thought. "Places they can recruit a lot of controllers get their own pools. School. The hospital maybe," she frowned. "What about Neptune Burger."

I shrugged. "It gets a lot of foot traffic, so maybe it's a place where Yeerks can just go if they need to get some rays without looking suspicious. We need to figure out _which_ Nepture Burger they're talking about."

"I'll do that," Marco said. "Flying around is cool… we check them all out in teams, see where people are going in and coming out longer than it takes to eat a burger and fries maybe? I don't know. But that… I'll do that. Someone else can check out the hospital."

I should have offered to do it myself. That's what a leader would do. But I had just come out of the school and had no desire to see the same thing play out a second time.

"I'll talk to Elfangor and Tobias tomorrow. Rachel too. We'll figure something out."

Cassie gave me a look and squeezed my arm.

"Yeah. Alright we'll get out of here. And Marco… stay s-"

"Hey Marco, you done yet?" Marco's dad came into the garage, looking pretty rough.

"No pizzas left? I swore we had so- oh, hi Jake. It's been a while. And um…"

"Cassie, dad. Sorry – Jake showed up before I got a chance to look. He wanted to let me know they're dating now."

I looked at Marco. My face one giant 'are you serious right now' as I felt my cheeks and neck heat up. Well, there was revenge for showing up at his house uninvited, I guess.

"Oh. Good for you kids. Are you all going out then for the evening or…?"

I had to admire the guy taking Cassie and I showing up in nothing but a step up from swimwear in stride.

"No, sir –" I interrupted before Marco had a chance to dig my hole any deeper. "I was just about to take Cassie home. Just passing by and thought I'd stop by and tell Marco the um, news." I gestured to Cassie – not looking at her. Dammit, Marco.

It hit me then that I didn't even have my car with me. Thankfully, Marco's dad wasn't at his sharpest.

"Ok well it was good seeing you again. Marco, I'll see you inside in a minute."

"Sure dad, I'll just see Jake and Cassie out. Be right there."

We walked out. Marco gave me a shit-eating grin. "You kids have fun."

Cassie and I took to the air again a few minutes later, a very different type of silence in the air.

((Cassie, about that...))

((It's fine,)) she said, thoughts forcefully breezy. ((Marco needed to make a crack and it did provide a cover for us.))

((Yeh.)) I replied. Then five minutes later decided I couldn't just let it go.

((We've danced around it for a while,)) I said at last. ((But I think we both know.)

((Yeh. But…))

((But now we're in a war.)) I finished. ((What do we do?))

Cassie thought for a moment, both of us gliding back towards my part of town.

((No secrets,)) she said at last. ((We know we can't just go hang out at the movies now, or just be teenagers. But… it would be nice to see where it can go. No pressure, let's not make a big deal of it but let's not pretend nothing's going on between us either.))

I nodded, as best as a seagull can nod in flight, which isn't very well. ((I can go with that.))

((I never thought my first boyfriend would be a bird, though)) she said with a shy chuckle.

((Only some of the time. Sometimes I'm a dog or a racoon. Man of many talents.))

((When you're a man and not the dog or racoon.))

((True.))

I didn't mention the lizard or the tiger. Speaking of we'd need to practice the battle-morphs, but I kept that thought to myself for the time being as well. We'd done enough today. We landed near back at the house I'd dumped my clothes and wallet earlier, and then we went back to my place, picked up my car, and I drove Cassie home. Yeah, she could have flown back, and the context of 'keeping our cover' was a bit lame after all the random showing up all over town we'd already done, but it gave us a little time to just talk as humans, and was a bit of normality that I needed that afternoon.

Driving back alone, I thought about all I needed to do. Check out the Neptune Burgers. Check out the hospital. Start trying to get a lead on the cop. See if we'd found out anything about Mrs. Chapman – she had been ignoring Melissa too, and if time management was a concern for Yeerks, then she was an obvious candidate for being a Controller... although that still didn't explain Melissa. Figure out how to save my school from an overnight mass infestation that was likely being planned any day now. Pick Elfangor's brain even if he didn't want me too.

I felt very tired.

I had one more thing to do that night. I know I should have waited, should have got Marco to morph as me at the same time, or at least had Rachel come out and play the visiting cousin. But I couldn't ignore the Sharing. I couldn't pretend that we didn't potentially have another possible location for a Yeerk Pool. Couldn't pretend that I had smelt _something_ off about Chapman and those guys at the beach when in my dog morph. A smell Rachel said she couldn't pick up as a cat, despite the cat's almost as impressive sense of smell. That repressed anger.

I waited until Homer went out into the back yard, which looks out from my window.

My window, not Tom's.

I morphed. I padded over to my brother's room. I scratched a paw on the door.

The door opened. "Hey boy, sorry but it's time for bed." Tom said, his voice friendly as he gave me a scratch behind the year. My tail wagged.

Tom's room was pretty empty. Clearly, he'd spent the whole day packing. Getting ready to move to his new apartment/job in a few weeks. Moving to the other side of town.

His room smelt like cardboard boxes, a bit of a smell of sweat coming from the bed.

And anger. And I knew. The final puzzle piece.

I scrambled away, I didn't want to be here. Didn't want to have a Yeerk pat my head and call me a good boy. I ran out, through the doggy door and into the garage and out into the neighborhood. I wasn't sure where I was going, and then I found myself outside of the Chapman house. Rachel had left hours ago, obviously. There was a Yeerk in there named Iniss two-two-six. What name did the enemy in my own house have? I wanted to know. I wanted to know the name of the Yeerk I was going to find a way to kill.

I crept around the house. Maybe I wanted to know I wasn't alone. Maybe misery just loves company. Maybe I needed to remember all the reasons why we were fighting. I couldn't see her, but my sense of hearing was great. I stayed outside Melissa Chapman's window for about an hour. It was awful, the house was so quiet. Melissa wasn't crying at that point, but I could smell tears. Her heartbeat was constant, she was sleeping.

Maybe I wanted her to know there were others fighting to free her dad, even if I couldn't tell her.

We'll save them, I thought to myself. Her parents. My brother. Those guys on the beach. The cop from the mall. We'll save them all.

None of those promises helped me sleep that night.


End file.
